Re: Names of test cases (Was: Halfway to genericizing...)

[David_Marston@lotus.com]

I can tell that Ken is still mis-interpreting the Iron Man design. The
good news is that we agree on most of the goals.

1. Every single iteration from Straw Man through Iron Man was built in
such a way that the submitters do not have to re-arrange their
directory structure. In no case do we ever "flatten out" the directory
structure, we just build a directory one level up and populate with the
union of all the directories from all the submitters.

2. The catalog can be flatter in structure than the actual directory
structure because the Identifier element gives a file-path from the
submitter's top directory down to where the "primary" input file is
found. Other files may need to be located by relative pathing from
there. (The "primary" files varies with the "operation" value.)

3. We agree on the need to plan for all uses of the catalog data:
>Please talk this over on Wednesday thinking about how the tests will
>be identified in all uses, not just the submitter and not just the
>merge.

4. We clearly disagree about forcing a uniqueness rule on the
submitters. I said
>>If the submitter has a sub-directory structure, they may not have
>>made the Source strings unique across their entire suite. We don't
>>force them to rename their individual cases....
and I showed an example where the files could be named "test001" in
different subdirectories. Ken wrote
>I feel strongly the Source be unique for each test across a
>submitter's collection....
but he's saying that so that Title_Source will be unique. I think I
have a solution.

Earlier, I wrote
>>The combination of Title and Identifier will be unique within the
>>merged test suite. [Title/Identifier, specifically]

To which Ken replied:
>Yes, but it is not lexically valid as an identifier for hyperlinking
>purposes ... it isn't a name token.

This hyperlinking requirement wasn't clear enough to be directly
represented in Iron Man, but the solution is to form the unique
string
Title/Identifier
and then map all "/" characters to "_" for the hyperlinking. If we
need to store that string somewhere, we can add it as another
element or attribute in the merged catalog (perhaps calling it
"merge-name" to stress its role). With that one supplement to Iron
Man, I believe that all identified needs are addressed *and* we
don't force submitters to rename any tests, nor to change their
directory structure.

Given that some organizations haven't shown any inclination to send
in tests, and others have sent uncataloged tests on an as-is basis,
I think we should not be imposing more requirements like renaming.
We need to make submission of a test suite as painless as we can.
Renaming is avoidable.
.................David Marston