pmc2c tests need review.

[darbelo]

As of r41480 all pmc2c are skipped, since they rely on deprecated (and broken) behavior. Some tests have also been TODO since the vtinit merge (r38471, five months ago) broke them.

The approach taken by the test file is to run pmc2c on a fake pmc and check the emitted text via regexes. Additionally, the fake pmcs used are flawed and couldn't be built even when all tests passed.

Another point to take into account is that pmc2c is used to build all of the core parrot pmcs and dynpmcs, which means that bugs in pmc2c are more likely to break the build than to cause test failures. And that any change in the pmc2c output is likely to cause test failures, even if perfectly valid.

So, rather than modifying the test to pass, I think we should review their usefulness and consider their removal and/or other testing approaches. I'm opening this ticket as a reminder that a decision needs to be taken, once we do that we can close this ticket an open a new one to track it's progress.

[cotto]

+1 to either ripping them out entirely or making them minimal enough to be indifferent toward the specifics of the generated code. For a component that's such an important part of the build, it doesn't make sense to test anything that wouldn't be caught by the build process itself.

[darbelo]

Afte discussion in #parrotsketch the tests were removed in r41565. Closing ticket.