[pkg-GD-devel] Bug#867003: FTBFS of libgd2 due to test failures

[Jiri Palecek]

Hello,

I was looking at the recent FTBFS of libgd2, which prevented security 
fixes to reach debian archive for more than a week. The FTBFS were 
restricted to several architectures.

By the look of it, it seems that the errors are simple arithmetical 
inaccuracies, when the tests expect pixel-exact results. I was 
specifically concerned about gdimagerotate/bug00067 test on i386, and 
the result of the rotate operation, while not comparing equal to the 
expected image, seemed the same to the naked eye.

Slight differences of the computations on different architectures are to 
be expected, eg. if those architectures use different floating point 
formats, although it shouldn't matter that much in the test I mentioned 
(by rough estimate it should need a precision of about 1/2^18 -- 1/2^20, 
while IEE754 float is more precise than that). However, I was surprised 
that when I tested it with optimizations turned off, there were failures 
in the test suite too, but _different_ failures. This should mean 
there's something dodgy going on either in gcc or in the code.

Anyway, I guess libgd2's aim isn't to provide pixel perfect image 
manipulations, but rather accessible image functions for eg. web servers 
in PHP. In that case, the testsuite doesn't really reflect the 
requirements it should fulfill, and it should focus more on security 
than accuracy.

I would propose to ditch the testsuite completely from the building 
process of the package, since in its present state, it is inherently 
unreliable and would cause FTBFS. Instead, an autopkgtest testsuite 
could be made (with the running the same tests), which could be 
automatically ran using ci.debian.org. Such a testsuite could probably 
even be rigged to run under valgrind, which could catch some memory 
errors. At the same time, the testsuite could be made more lenient (or 
the library code more accurate), but that would require substantially 
more work and I don't know whether it would be desirable.

Please let me know what you think.

Regards

     Jiri Palecek