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/rm37785.docent.yaml src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37785.docent.yaml
index 5b52919c345..4d63aa2a424 100644
--- src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37785.docent.yaml
+++ src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37785.docent.yaml
@@ -10,30 +10,33 @@
 # hg/hgTracks/imageV2.c, 7bed537d83b.
 #
 # The recipe is Lou's own URL from the ticket, which is all state and no session: both
 # tracks in pack and both given the SAME image order, which is what makes the tie.
 #
 # What makes this test different from every other one here: rows:, height: and text: are
 # all blind to the bug. The same three rows are drawn either way, the total image height
 # is the same, and the labels are drawn into a PNG rather than into the page text. The only
 # thing that changes is which row's <td> the center label's image map hangs off, so this
 # is the one script that uses has:/noHas: to say where an element sits.
 #
 # hgTracks puts each center label in a MAP named map_center_<track>, inside the data cell
 # of the row it belongs to. Fixed: map_center_mane is in td_data_mane. Buggy: it moved into
 # td_data_knownGene along with the squished slice. Both halves are asserted, because the
 # right map being present says nothing about a stray copy elsewhere.
+proof:
+  - "assertion-only 2026-09-05 -- written from the ticket after the fix had shipped"
+
 target: genome-test
 db: hg38
 position: chr11:528907-538911
 reset: true
 fast: true
 steps:
   - go: chr11:528907-538911
   - hide: all
   # squishyPack, and the colliding image order, are cart variables with no verb of their
   # own, so this is the goto: escape hatch. It is also the exact URL the ticket used.
   - goto: "/cgi-bin/hgTracks?db=hg38&position=chr11:528907-538911&hideTracks=1&knownGene=pack&mane=pack&knownGene_imgOrd=4&mane_imgOrd=4&pix=1100"
 
   - expect:
       rows: [ruler, mane, knownGene]
       exact: true