[GHC] #15363: Do some cleaning up of the testsuite driver

[GHC]

#15363: Do some cleaning up of the testsuite driver
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
        Reporter:  lantti            |                Owner:  lantti
            Type:  task              |               Status:  new
        Priority:  low               |            Milestone:  8.6.1
       Component:  Test Suite        |              Version:  8.4.3
      Resolution:                    |             Keywords:
Operating System:  Unknown/Multiple  |         Architecture:
                                     |  Unknown/Multiple
 Type of failure:  None/Unknown      |            Test Case:
      Blocked By:                    |             Blocking:
 Related Tickets:                    |  Differential Rev(s):
       Wiki Page:                    |
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Description changed by lantti:

Old description:

> When trying to understand the GHC test suite I noticed some small
> improvements that I could do to it. This would probably work nicely as my
> first task on GHC:
>
> Rewrite the timeout.hs in python, it doesn't seem to do anything that
> would strictly need the Haskell libraries to be used and it is the only
> part of the test suite driver that is not written in python.
>
> Or;
>
> See if the timeout scripts could be eliminated altogether as the python
> subprocess module that we are using can now (since python 3.3) handle
> timeouts by itself and using the timeout scripts effectively doubles the
> number of processes we need to create for each test case. Notice that the
> timeout scripts do more than just generating the timeout.

New description:

 When trying to understand the GHC test suite I noticed some small
 improvements that I could do to it. This would probably work nicely as my
 first task on GHC:

 Rewrite the timeout.hs in python, it is used for Windows runs but it
 doesn't seem to do anything that would strictly need the Haskell libraries
 to be used and it is the only part of the test suite driver that is not
 written in python.

 Or;

 See if the timeout scripts could be eliminated altogether as the python
 subprocess module that we are using can now (since python 3.3) handle
 timeouts by itself and using the timeout scripts effectively doubles the
 number of processes we need to create for each test case. Notice that the
 timeout scripts do more than just generating the timeout.

--

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/15363#comment:4>
GHC <http://www.haskell.org/ghc/>
The Glasgow Haskell Compiler