Currently, MoarVM is tested indirectly via the NQP and Rakudo test
suites. This is not necessarily sufficient to test the spesh and JIT
subsystems of MoarVM, because these:
- operate only on very active code, which is rare in short-running tests
- work on an asynchronous thread, which makes this (somewhat) unpredictable
- are many layers removed from the code-as-written (separated by the rakudo/nqp bytecode compiler and static optimizer)
Yet these are highly complex subsystems with strict correctness requirements. Therefore we need a system to test these directly.
A successful project will deliver:
- A tool to execute test cases for
speshand the JIT compiler. This tool should read a test case and directly build a suitable IR representation of the code to be processed. - A few example test cases that exercise this system.
A student with skills in C programming and a working understanding of virtual machines and compilers should have a good chance of succeeding.
Medium/hard