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/testRegistry/tests/input/good.tsv src/utils/testRegistry/tests/input/good.tsv
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..05696c0b597
--- /dev/null
+++ src/utils/testRegistry/tests/input/good.tsv
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# A small registry for testing testRegistry itself.  The paths are real files in the tree,
+# because check is meant to look at the file system and say so when one is gone.
+#ticket	release	test	docent	why	evidence	note
+37263	504	lib/tests/pathSimplifyTest.c	-	library	assertion-only	dot-dot collapsing
+38303	504	-	rm38303.docent.yaml	invisible	-	needs one: a session file path spelled through a symlinked config directory
+38320	504	lib/tests/faSpeedReadTest.c	-	invisible	sandbox-ab	the grower and the caller asked for different sizes
+38340	504	hg/hgSession/tests/backupParseTest.c	-	invisible	unrecorded	a valueless pair in a session backup
+38340	-	lib/tests/cgiCookieTest.c	-	invisible	unrecorded	the same pair in a cookie header, no target version yet