On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 10:11:50PM +0100, Frank Shearar wrote:
> http://build.squeak.org/job/SqueakTrunkOnSpur/31/testReport/junit/KernelTests.Chronology/DateAndTimeTest/testReadFrom/
> shows a not-very-helpful test failure report: Expected
> '2002-05-1...etc... but was '2002-05-1...etc....
> 
> If build.squeak.org is anything like my machine, that failure might
> more profitably be reported as:
> 
> Expected '2002-05-16T17:20:00+00:00' but was '2002-05-16T17:20:00+01:00'
> 
> from this assertion:
> 
> self assert: '2002-05-16T17:20:00+00:00' equals: ' 2002-05-16T17:20'
> asDateAndTime printString.

If you are suggesting that a more informative error message would be
helpful in this case, then yes for sure. My only caution would be to make
sure that the improved message looks reasonable when viewed in a test
runner in the image, since that is the most important usage. If you can
make it display something meaningful in both the CI output and the
test runner, that's great.

> 
> Is this expected (because of changes in datetime primitives)?
>

No. The Spur image format and associated changes to the VM should be
completely independent of primitives like this. You should expect the
same results when running Spur, Cog, Stackinterpreter, or the traditional
interpreter VM.

The more important factor would be the platform support code that actually
implements the low level "get the system time" functions. This will vary
across Windows, Unix, Mac, Risc OS, etc, and it may also have variations
between the oscog platforms branch and the trunk platforms branch.

For example, I think that the newer microsecond clock prims are unimplemented
in the Windows interpreter VM, and I'm not sure if they have been implemented
in the oscog branch. So if you were seeing differences in test results on
Windows versus other platforms, that would be the likely cause.

Dave