Proposal to delete t/old-bugs.{t,data}

[marc-vanderwal]

Purpose

This PR removes t/old-bugs.t and its associated data file from the test suite.

These tests are very obsolete and depend on live data returned by name servers on the Internet. Because of that, much of the data cannot be rerecorded anymore. The tests in question are also largely superseded by the newer scenario-based tests.

Deleting these files does not reduce the coverage of the test suite in general, except for two very specific places in the entire codebase of Zonemaster-Engine that probably need to be overhauled anyway.

After careful analysis, it turns out that the loss of coverage is the consequence of unclear or incomplete specifications and it would make more sense to rework the specifications and their implementations instead of adding band-aids to keep the coverage identical. The following issues were created in that context:

• Does Delegation03 make sense when testing the root zone? #1485
• Specification and implementation details of Nameserver01 #1486

Context

While developing some of the features and fixes for the latest release (v2025.2), we’ve had problems due to some .t files that were more or less difficult to fix because rerecording the corresponding data file was not always doable. Sometimes, I had to resort to extreme kludges to .data files to get tests passing again. One example is commit e24a21e, part of #1475.

And t/old-bugs.data is a prime example of a data file containing things that cannot ever be rerecorded, again, because the file is old and the Internet has moved on in the meantime.

Changes

• Remove t/old-bugs.t and t/old-bugs.data.

How to test this PR

Unit tests should still pass and coverage should stay unchanged, save for the two aforementioned places.

With Devel::Cover installed, generate a coverage report on the codebase while t/old-bugs.t and .data are still there:

$ cover -test cover_db.before

Then check out this branch and generate another report:

$ cover -test cover_db.after

Open the cover_db.before/coverage.html and cover_db.after/coverage.html files side by side. The only difference you should see is before:

and after (differences circled in red):

Open cover_db.{before,after}/blib-lib-Zonemaster-Engine-Test-Delegation-pm--branch.html side by side. The only difference should be at line 502:

(The circled area is green in the “before” report and red in the “after” report).

Open http://localhost:8080/cover_db.after/blib-lib-Zonemaster-Engine-Test-Nameserver-pm--condition.html side by side. The only difference should be at line 700:

(The area circled in red is green in the “before” report and red in the “after” report).

[matsduf]

Even if we loose some coverage in the short run, I think it is much better to focus on the new scenario model and remove legacy tests that we cannot control