Re: Repost: FastFPE results for Linux/ARM

On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 12:08:22PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Marko Kreen <marko@l-t.ee> writes:
> > On Linux/ARM PostgreSQL may encounter 2 types of floating point emulation:
> >   1) standard precision: Linux/NWFPE, GCC soft-float
> >   2) reduced precision: Linux/FastFPE
>
> I don't really see why we should consider the latter as a "pass".
> The regression tests exist in part to inform you when you are using
> a substandard platform.  Lately it seems that people have adopted the
> goal that all the tests should "pass" no matter what.  I fundamentally
> disagree with that.

Well, the main problem is the confusion a failure causes.  How
should a user decide whether he can run the database safely or
not, after a failed regression test?  Or even what the reason
for failure was?

FastFPE on ARM is expected and seems to belong to "dont worry"
category.  And I dont like saying: "Couple of regression failures
are normal".

Although I can understand that 'reduced precision' may sound
worrysome to lot of people.  Maybe there should be new class
of failures in pg_regress: "expected failures" - which still
count as failures but have little note explaining the problem
so user can decide about the severity.

--
marko