[m-rev.] diff: updating programming style in samples

[Julien Fischer]

Hi Zoltan,

On Wed, 7 Jul 2021, Zoltan Somogyi wrote:

> When I searched the samples for examples of parsing to recommend
> in m-users, I found myself looking at code I would not want to recommend
> to anyone. This diff goes some way towards fixing that.
>
> BTW, it would have been nice if the samples had test cases that were
> exercised during bootcheck.

The samples directory has a Mmakefile that builds most of it; plugging
that into the bootcheck script should be straightforward.

There's also a tests directory, but that looks to be suffering some
bitrot.

> The biggest sample program, muz, has
> a simple test, but it cannot have ever been passed, because muz is
> missing a module (ironically named repository.m), which, looking at the
> backup snapshot I took of the CVS repository when I left UoM, seems
> to have been never added to CVS.

repository.m is only imported by the unused module zlogic.m; muz should
(and does) compile and run fine, e.g.

     $ mmake muz.depend
     $ mmake muz
     $ ./muz -t toolkit.tex example.tex

should work.

> Can we add a policy that any *new* programs added to samples
> have to be tested by bootcheck?

No objection from me, although we would need to set things up so
that is possible first.

> Similarly, should we change bootcheck so that -e (checking the extras)
> is the default?

Does it still work?  IIRC, -e was never that much of a check and I would
imagine that it has bitrotted.

Julien.