Remove "optional - gcc" from doctests

[jdemeyer]

Some doctests are marked

# optional - gcc

but it seems reasonable to require gcc for doctests. After all, compiling Cython code is an integral part of Sage. Indeed, many doctests already fail without gcc.

Unfortunately, this exposes #12446, so we need "# known bug".

Component: doctest coverage

Author: Jeroen Demeyer

Reviewer: Karl-Dieter Crisman, John Palmieri

Merged: sage-5.4.1.rc0

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/13533

[jdemeyer]

Attachment: 13533_gcc_not_optional.patch.gz

[kcrisman]

comment:2

This seems to have a different mission than #11162. Maybe it's not obvious we should force people to have gcc to run doctests?

[jdemeyer]

comment:3

Replying to @kcrisman:

Maybe it's not obvious we should force people to have gcc to run doctests?

The problem is that there are quite a few doctests already in Sage which require a C/C++/Fortran compiler. So we certainly could mark all those "# optional - foo compiler". But then a lot of tests would be missed in normal doctesting. For example, #12446 would not have happened if the "# optional - gcc" wasn't there.

I think it's not too much to ask for a user to have binutils installed in order to run Sage doctests. Why only binutils? If #13515 is merged (which will happen, since it's a blocker), we can ship all the needed compilers with Sage, which means the host system only needs to provide binutils (assembler, linker, archiver...)

[jdemeyer]

comment:4

Replying to @kcrisman:

Maybe it's not obvious we should force people to have gcc to run doctests?

A different —more pragmatic— answer is the following: if a user doesn't have a compiler toolchain, he is very unlikely to be a Sage developer. Why would a non-Sage-developer want to run all doctests?

[kcrisman]

comment:5

(Also, I could have sworn that #6737 and #5094 would have gotten rid of most SageX references... of course there is still #5160 and sage-sagex, see #9191, which I'm not sure how to fix easily... and the German and French tutorials :( which also refer to the now-defunct examples directory...)

[kcrisman]

comment:6

Maybe it's not obvious we should force people to have gcc to run doctests?

A different —more pragmatic— answer is the following: if a user doesn't have a compiler toolchain, he is very unlikely to be a Sage developer. Why would a non-Sage-developer want to run all doctests?

Because she is trying to help out? Just checking things work on an obscure platform? Wants to make sure their copy isn't corrupted somehow? I guess a better argument is your first one, that a number of tests already fail without gcc, so we should be consistent (which way, I'm agnostic on).

[jdemeyer]

comment:7

So you agree that make all gcc tests non-optional is the better option then? For me, the most important argument is to increase testing coverage.

[kcrisman]

comment:8

I guess I'm agnostic, like I said. I could easily go the other way.

[jdemeyer]

comment:9

Replying to @kcrisman:

Just checking things work on an obscure platform?

The only way to have a working Sage without gcc is to download a binary. For this obscure platform, there won't be binaries, so you need gcc to build Sage in the first place.