Test system for the Widl compiler

[Connor McAdams]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2022 at 05:20:00PM +0200, Bernhard Kölbl wrote:
> Hey everyone,
> 
> during the course of implementing WinRT / UWP stuff, I regularly come
> across missing IDL 3.0 features in our Widl compiler.
> Unfortunately, Widl's code seems to have grown in a rater unpleasant
> direction and is sometimes a real burden to understand and maintain. I
> think some refactoring to its code would be very well fitting and make
> things a lot easier for everyone, but refactoring can also bring
> breakage and makes tracking down errors with Git harder. Additionally,
> as the code is already not that small, errors have an easy way to slip
> in without noticing.
> So to me, the ideal solution seems to add a testing system to the
> compiler, like most of Wine's components already have.
> 
> Rémi and I already outlined some ideas:
> - Port the Winetest system to Unix programs
> - Make a libwidl or Widl.exe and test against that with our current test system
> - Add the tests into Widl itself as callable parameter
> 
> What do you think is the best solution?
> Getting some suggestions would be great. :)
> 
> Thanks,
> Bernhard
>

I don't have any suggestions or anything, just wanted to say I think
this is a good idea as well and something I've thought about in the
past. There have been a few times where I've wanted to touch widl and
been a bit scared off of it due to fear of breaking a bunch of things by
accident. Any sort of test system would be great to prevent these kinds
of issues. It'd also help when adding support for new features.

Sorry for not having any suggestions, just wanted to voice my support
for something like this. :)