Tcl Source Code

When testing gcc, one gets a new failure that wasn't present in 8.5.

ERROR: tcl error sourcing
/home/uros/gcc-svn/trunk/libffi/testsuite/libffi.call/call.exp.
ERROR: couldn't compile regular expression pattern: out of memory

My machine has a 12 GB of ram with another 100 GB of swap space to back it.  The machine is not out of memory.

Please fix this, we have people that use gcc and the gcc developers still use tcl to driving compiler testing to ensure product quality.  Please test 100 MB regexps and ensure they work, the 1980s are over.

Please read and understand the wisdom of:

  http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Semantics.html

it is as relevant today, as when it was written.  Also, please don't just close and ignore issues like this:

  http://sourceforge.net/p/tcl/bugs/5178/

It is a bug, and you should fix it.  It is not amoral to test gcc.  If you want the user to explain the limit that is suitable for them, feel free.  It should not be a configure option however, but a run-time option.

Also, allocating 100 MB on the stack isn't cool.  You should have two paths, if the object is very small, allocate on the stack, say 32K or less.  If larger, it should be allocated with malloc.

The SF bug is already closed: https://sourceforge.net/p/tcl/bugs/5178/, so let's close this one as well.

I tried to remove the links in the comment with no succes.

Anybody warned, it is an online casino !

Take care, Harald

The tip of development on the 8.6 sources
as I write this is here:

http://core.tcl.tk/tcl/info/1e66a5c9c0

There are links on that page for tarball
or ZIP archive downloads for the current
state of Tcl 8.6 development.

Can you please confirm that the failure you
describe has been corrected there.  That is,
please confirm that those sources produce a
Tcl library that will not fail testing gcc.

Thanks.