[rfc] list tests known to fail on a platform

[John Arbash Meinel]

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Vincent Ladeuil wrote:
>>>>>> "martin" == Martin Pool <mbp at canonical.com> writes:
...

     martin> Of course there is some risk that we'd just be
>     martin> sweeping the parrot under the carpet and never come
>     martin> back to fix them.
> 
> Far less likely for TDD addicts as we are :-) Minimizing selftest
> output should be high on everybody TODO list :) Hence getting
> XFAIL messages will constantly remind us of the pending problems.
> 
> Nevertheless, mentioning bug numbers in the messages will both
> allows synthetic messages and provide tracking.

The only problem I have is that I've also used XFAIL to indicate known
limitations of algorithms. I used it in the Graph code, and also in the
Merge code that I wrote.

There are various ways to handle this. For *algorithmic* code, I think
it is nice to define the boundary of operations. So people using it know
what will and won't happen.

There are certainly other viewpoints, but the Graph stuff specifically
was useful, as I did eventually change the algorithm to handle those cases.

I guess there is XFAIL - we should get to this, and XFAIL - not very
likely to get to this.

John
=:->

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