4697bbddd881c72cccb85b9ff0aacd769396b9d0
braney
  Thu Sep 10 07:34:35 2026 -0700
docent: record what evidence each regression test has, and count it

A regression test written after the fix asserts the right answer, but nobody
has watched it fail for the reason it exists, and a loose assertion in that
state is indistinguishable from no test at all. Four of the 37 scripts here
have actually been watched to flip. That was recorded only as prose in each
script's header, so answering "how many of these are real regression tests"
meant a grep and a read, and the number could not be quoted.

Every script now carries a top-level `proof:` key, one quoted line per piece
of evidence, `<level> <YYYY-MM-DD> -- <what was seen>`. docent.js reads only
the keys it names off the parsed document, so this costs a run nothing.

tests/proof.js reads them and tallies, wired up as `make proof` in the shared
docentTest.mk. It exits 1 on a malformed line, an unknown level, or a line
left unquoted -- that last one because nearly every note names a ticket and a
bare # in an unquoted YAML scalar silently truncates the sentence at the
ticket number, which is how the first pass of this change lost half its text.

The levels, weakest first: assertion-only, xfail, sandbox-ab, server-flip,
caught-regression. Today that reads 31 / 2 / 0 / 3 / 1.

nightly.sh now records the flips it finds. An xfail that PASSES is the best
evidence this suite produces -- the same server, the same fixtures, the same
script, one real build apart -- and until now it arrived as a red mail and was
thrown away with the log 60 days later. It is appended to
/hive/users/braney/docentNightly/flips.log, one line per script ever, outside
the checkout because --update resets the tree. The mail says what to do with
it. The three flips that already happened (rm38272 2026-09-06, rm36212
2026-09-09, rm38310 2026-09-10) were recovered from the old logs and seeded
there by hand.

Full suite run after the change: 37 scripts, all ok. refs #38252

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

diff --git src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm36514.docent.yaml src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm36514.docent.yaml
index ebf52bff163..75900231414 100644
--- src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm36514.docent.yaml
+++ src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm36514.docent.yaml
@@ -1,29 +1,32 @@
 # #36514 -- after a QuickLift from hg38 to hs1, typing a chromosome name into the
 # position box returned an error instead of navigating.
 #
 # The ticket's steps are: reset, hg38, convert to hs1 with QuickLift, go to
 # chr7:156982676-156996015, then enter "chr7" as a search query.
 #
 # goShow: is used rather than go: on purpose. go: navigates straight to a position;
 # goShow: puts the term in the position box and lets the page submit it, which is the
 # path the user took and the one the bug was on.
 # Asserts on quickLiftChain, the chain track the lift itself adds. A data track is no
 # good here: at the ticket's position (chr7:156,982,676-156,996,015) mane has no
 # features, so its row is legitimately absent and the assertion would fail for a reason
 # unconnected to the bug. The chain is always drawn in a lifted view, so it is the right
 # way to say "we are on a drawn lifted page and not on an error page".
+proof:
+  - "assertion-only 2026-09-04 -- written from the ticket after the fix had shipped"
+
 target: genome-test
 db: hg38
 position: chr7:156982676-156996015
 reset: true
 fast: true
 steps:
   - go: chr7:156982676-156996015
   - hide: all
   - track: {mane: pack}
   - convert: {to: hs1, quicklift: true}
   - open: lift
   - expect: {rows: [quickLiftChain], noText: "Warning/Error"}
 
   - goShow: chr7
   # A search that fails renders a perfectly good page carrying the message, so the row