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/rm37520.docent.yaml src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37520.docent.yaml
index 58090a9501c..c8f04c52b76 100644
--- src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37520.docent.yaml
+++ src/hg/utils/docent/tests/regress/rm37520.docent.yaml
@@ -1,32 +1,35 @@
 # #37520 -- QuickLift tracks were removed after hopping to another genome and back.
 #
 # The ticket's steps: reset, hg38, convert to hs1 with QuickLift, then pick hg38 from the
 # Genomes menu and hs1 again. The lifted tracks were gone from hs1.
 #
 # The two hops are done with goto: rather than by driving the blue-bar menu, because the
 # bug is about what the cart keeps across a database switch, not about the menu widget.
 # A menu click and a db= URL reach the same cart change.
 # Asserts on quickLiftChain rather than a data track, for two reasons. At the ticket's
 # position mane has no features, so its row is legitimately absent. And the chain is
 # itself one of the quickLift tracks this ticket says went missing, so if the lift is
 # dropped across the genome hop the chain goes with it -- which is exactly the check.
+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"}
 
   # Away to hg38 and back to hs1. The lifted track has to survive the round trip.
   - goto: "/cgi-bin/hgTracks?db=hg38&pix=1100"
   - goto: "/cgi-bin/hgTracks?db=hs1&pix=1100"
 
   # The row id of a lifted track carries a per-run hub_<n>_ prefix, which rows: matches by
   # suffix, so this holds without knowing the hub number.
   - expect: {rows: [quickLiftChain], noText: "Warning/Error"}