Unit testing generated C code

[stefanos82]

When we build Nelua from source ourselves, we can test it via make test which goes through a series of steps to validate its code and libraries.

My question is, how can we unit test the generated C code to verify it produces accurate output?

I'm not talking about sanitizing the code; we already have a flag for that.

[ghost]

Generate assembly code of the nelua code
Generate C code of the nelua code

Generate assembly code of the C code generated by nelua
Compare those two assembly code and see if the output is accurate or not

[stefanos82]

That's not the unit testing I'm talking about.

See https://github.com/sheredom/utest.h/#design

[ghost]

If you are talking about unit testing the generated C code, you could use a C Unit Testing Library
See https://github.com/oz123/awesome-c#testing

If you are talking about unit testing the generated C code from nelua code, then never mind this reply

[edubart]

My question is, how can we unit test the generated C code to verify it produces accurate output?

The make test has a test to check if the textual output of C generated code is correct, it's the file spec/cgenerator_spec.nelua, that file tests most of possible C code generation situations.

And when you are testing the execution of a Nelua program, you are actually testing execution of C code, because Nelua gets translated to C. Thus, if your Nelua code is working correctly, this means that the generated C code is also working correctly.

[stefanos82]

Oh wow...I didn't know that, thank you for letting me know @edubart!