5011b739391b6a1b6129d473b6c050010baf1f6f
braney
  Sat Sep 19 17:57:37 2026 -0700
testRegistry: a registry of which unit test defends which ticket

A bug ticket has no way to say whether a test now defends its fix, and a test
has no way to say which bug it came from.  The two questions are asked from
opposite ends and neither the tree nor Redmine answers either one.

utils/testRegistry/registry.tsv is that table, hand written, one row per ticket
per test, starting at v504.  Unit tests only: the browser-page regression tests
are the docent suite, refs #38252, which already names each script for its
ticket, and a docent column here says which ticket has one of those too.

Each row says why a unit test is the right test, because "the fix is in a
library file" is wrong in both directions.  A wording fix in hg/lib needs no
unit test, and a performance rewrite inside hgTracks needs one badly, since
nothing else can tell that the slow path has come back.  The three reasons are
invisible, perf and library, and a perf row says what has to be measured --
queries, passes, allocations, bytes -- never wall-clock seconds.

testRegistry reads it: ticket, test, release, why, needed, unwatched, tickets,
check.  No network and no database, so the check can run anywhere.

check is why the table is checked in rather than derived.  A registry that
quietly names files nobody has, saying a bug is covered when it is not, is
worse than no registry, so check fails the build the day a row rots.  Its own
tests are in tests/, with one row of input/bad.tsv per complaint check can
make, and utils/makefile runs the whole thing so it reaches make test from src.

Today: 37 tickets, 12 covered by 11 tests, 25 waiting.

refs #38391

diff --git src/utils/makefile src/utils/makefile
index dc0f4d9b9d2..56cbea02d95 100644
--- src/utils/makefile
+++ src/utils/makefile
@@ -273,30 +273,34 @@
 	    chmod +x $*; \
 	    echo cp -p $* ${SCRIPTS}; \
 	    cp -p $* ${SCRIPTS}; \
 	fi
 
 testAll: $(ALL_APPS:%=%.testAll)
 
 %.testAll:
 	@test -s $*/tests/makefile && (echo $*; cd $* && $(MAKE) test) || true
 
 test: testAll
 	cd faToTwoBit && ${MAKE} test
 	cd twoBitToFa && ${MAKE} test
 	cd twoBitInfo && ${MAKE} test
 	cd bedGeneParts && ${MAKE} test
+# testRegistry is not an app, so the testAll rule above cannot reach it.  Its test checks
+# that every row of the ticket-to-test registry still names a test that is in the tree,
+# refs #38391.
+	cd testRegistry && ${MAKE} test
 
 clean: $(ALL_APPS:%=%.clean)
 	touch non-empty-rm.o
 	- find . -name \*.o -print | xargs rm
 
 %.clean:
 	cd $* && echo $* && $(MAKE) clean
 
 BAD_DIRS= \
 	ccCpLock \
 	est2genomeToPsl \
 	geneStarts \
 	jimgrep \
 	jkShell \
 	wigAsciiToBinary \