[Haskell-cafe] Compiler's bane

[Andrew Coppin]

Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:
> On 2008 Sep 1, at 14:47, Andrew Coppin wrote:
>> I wonder - how do the GHC developers check that GHC works properly? 
>> (I guess by compiling stuff and running it... It's a bit harder to 
>> check that a lambda interpretter is working right.)
>
> GHC has a comprehensive test suite (not included in the source tarball 
> or the default checkout but easily checked out atop GHC).

I'm sure a large, complex product like GHC would have a large test 
suite. I was asking how it works. ;-)

Since GHC actually transforms Haskell to machine code in several stages, 
I presume each one can be checked independently, which probably makes 
things easier. But I bet the GHC developers don't have any way to just 
automatically build 1,000 random test cases and check that the compiler 
"works" for those...