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/rm37906.docent.yaml src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37906.docent.yaml
index 3d6691d0331..60e94bac682 100644
--- src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37906.docent.yaml
+++ src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37906.docent.yaml
@@ -9,29 +9,32 @@
 # loaded from genome-test at all. There is a Gerardo/mlq_37881 on genome-test, but it is a
 # different session. Reaching for it because the name matched would have made this test
 # pass or fail for reasons unconnected to the bug.
 #
 # Two things about the names, both of which cost a run to find out:
 #
 #   * "Neandertal Cntgs" (ntSeqContigs) and "Neandertal Seq" (ntSeqReads) are COMPOSITES,
 #     not tracks. A container never gets an img_data_ row of its own, so asserting on
 #     those two names can only ever fail. The rows carry the children's names.
 #   * ntSeqContigs has one child, bamAll. ntSeqReads has six bamSL* children, and at this
 #     window only some of them have reads: on 2026-09-04 bamSLMez1, bamSLVi33dot16,
 #     bamSLVi33dot25 and bamSLVi33dot26 drew, while bamSLDenisova did not. Naming all six
 #     would make the test fail whenever a sample legitimately has nothing here, so it
 #     names one child per composite instead: bamAll for the Cntgs side, bamSLMez1 for the
 #     Seq side. Those two are what "no data under either track" was about.
+proof:
+  - "assertion-only 2026-09-04 -- written from the ticket after the fix had shipped"
+
 target: genome-test
 db: hg18
 position: chr19:56940838-56946943
 reset: true
 fast: true
 steps:
   - go: chr19:56940838-56946943
   - hide: all
   - track: {ntSeqContigs: pack, ntSeqReads: pack}
 
   # A track that is on but has nothing in view still gets a row, so this is a check that
   # the data was found rather than that the track was enabled. That is the distinction the
   # bug turned on: the tracks were on the whole time and drew nothing.
   - expect: {rows: [bamAll, bamSLMez1], noText: "Warning/Error"}