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/rm36331.docent.yaml src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm36331.docent.yaml
index 6dedff3b101..ea5f382c132 100644
--- src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm36331.docent.yaml
+++ src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm36331.docent.yaml
@@ -1,37 +1,40 @@
 # #36331 -- quickLift from hg38 to hs1 died on the GENCODE Versions container.
 #
 # What the ticket recorded: hgConvert with QuickLift selected returned
 #
 #     Couldn't set connection database to hub_25071_hs1
 #     mySQL error 1049: Unknown database 'hub_25071_hs1'
 #
 # The ticket reproduced it by loading a saved session on hgwdev. That session is no longer
 # in hgcentraltest, so this builds the state instead. The only thing the session
 # contributed that matters is which track was showing, and three steps here do that. A
 # test that builds its own state cannot be broken by someone tidying their session list.
 #
 # The container is called GENCODE Archive (knownGeneArchive) now. "GENCODE Versions" in
 # the ticket is the old label for the same track.
+proof:
+  - "assertion-only 2026-09-04 -- written from the ticket after the fix had shipped"
+
 target: genome-test
 db: hg38
 position: chr7:155799529-155812871
 reset: true
 fast: true
 steps:
   - go: chr7:155799529-155812871
   - hide: all
   - track: {knownGeneArchive: show, knownGeneV49: pack}
 
   # Assert the source view first. If the track is not drawn here, the convert below would
   # have nothing to lift and the real assertion would pass for the wrong reason.
   - expect: {rows: [knownGeneV49], noText: "Warning/Error"}
 
   - convert: {to: hs1, quicklift: true}
   # The conversion result page is not hgTracks; its coordinate link is what reaches the
   # lifted view.
   - open: lift
 
   # Both halves are needed. The failure was an early-error page, which draws no image at
   # all, so `noText` on its own would have passed on exactly the page the bug produced.
   # The row id carries a per-run hub_<n>_ prefix, which `rows:` matches by suffix.
   - expect: {rows: [knownGeneV49], noText: "Unknown database"}