Re: PSA: we lack TAP test coverage on NetBSD and OpenBSD

Fabien COELHO <coelho@cri.ensmp.fr> writes:
>> I'm not following this argument.  The test case is basically useless
>> for its intended purpose with that parameter, because it's highly
>> likely that the failure mode it's supposedly checking for will be
>> masked by the "random" function's tendency to spit out the same
>> value all the time.

> The first value is taken about 75% of the time for N=1000 and s=2.5, which 
> means that a non deterministic implementation would succeed about 0.75² ~ 
> 56% of the time on that one.

Right, that's about what we've been seeing on OpenBSD.

> Also, the drawing procedure is less efficient when the parameter is close 
> to 1 because it is more likely to loop,

That might be something to fix, but I agree it's a reason not to go
overboard trying to flatten the test case's distribution right now.

> If you want something more drastic, using 1.5 instead of 2.5 would reduce 
> the probability of accidentaly passing the test by chance to about 20%, so 
> it would fail 80% of the time.

I think your math is off; 1.5 works quite well here.  I saw one failure
to produce distinct values in 20 attempts.  It's not demonstrably slower
than 2.5 either.  (1.1 is measurably slower; probably not by enough for
anyone to care, but 1.5 is good enough for me.)

            regards, tom lane