C++ unit tests crash

[clauswilke]

Since the release of testthat 3.0.0, my C++ unit tests crash. Before the crash occurs, I see some errors being generated in these lines:
https://github.com/wilkelab/isoband/blob/50da871dda8ad38c46c63f0eed0e58bb4146d57a/src/clip-lines.h#L38-L46
but that must be a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The testing code is written so that it provides valid input, and it used to run in the past.

Detailed output of devtools::test() follows below.

==> devtools::test()

Loading isoband
Testing isoband
✓ |  OK F W S | Context
✓ |  63       | clip-lines [0.2 s]                  
x |   0 1     | Catch                               
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FAILURE (???): 
singular transformation due to invalid box extent
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
x |   0 2     | Catch                               
────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Failure (???): 
singular transformation due to invalid box extent

Error (test-cpp.R:3:3): Catch unit tests pass
Error: '' does not exist in current working directory ('/Users/clauswilke/github/isoband/tests/testthat').
Backtrace:
 1. testthat::run_cpp_tests("isoband") test-cpp.R:3:2
 3. xml2:::read_xml.character(paste(output, collapse = "\n"))
 4. xml2:::path_to_connection(x)
 5. xml2:::check_path(path)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────
✓ |  10       | iso-to-sfg [0.4 s]                  
✓ |  43       | isobands [0.1 s]                    
✓ |  10       | isolines-grob [0.1 s]               
✓ |  23       | isolines                            
✓ |  24       | label-placer                        

══ Results ═════════════════════════════════════════
Duration: 1.1 s

[ FAIL 2 | WARN 0 | SKIP 0 | PASS 173 ]

Frustration is a natural part of programming :)

 *** caught bus error ***
address 0x7fd8cc80d4e0, cause 'non-existent physical address'
An irrecoverable exception occurred. R is aborting now ...

Exited with status 10.

[clauswilke]

@thomasp85 Do you have time to look into this within the next few days? (The package needs to be updated on CRAN by December 10 or will be archived.) It's unclear to me what is going on, and my only current fix is to disable all C++ unit tests, which seems suboptimal.

[clauswilke]

Pinging @jimhester also. Any idea what's happening? This is related to r-lib/testthat#1230, r-lib/testthat#1008.

I have made all the required changes for testthat 3.0, I believe:
https://github.com/wilkelab/isoband/blob/50da871dda8ad38c46c63f0eed0e58bb4146d57a/src/init.cpp#L16
https://github.com/wilkelab/isoband/blob/50da871dda8ad38c46c63f0eed0e58bb4146d57a/src/init.cpp#L23
https://github.com/wilkelab/isoband/blob/50da871dda8ad38c46c63f0eed0e58bb4146d57a/R/catch-routine-registration.R#L5

Uncommenting line 3 here causes the crash reproduced above:
https://github.com/wilkelab/isoband/blob/50da871dda8ad38c46c63f0eed0e58bb4146d57a/tests/testthat/test-cpp.R#L1-L4

[thomasp85]

Do you know which of the C++ unit tests triggers the failure? Is it the last black that expects errors on invalid unisex transform input?

If so it appears the errors are not properly caught, but I know next to nothing about testthats functionality for compiled code

[clauswilke]

This just shows how important a second pair of eyes is. You found the issue. If I comment out the following lines everything else works:
https://github.com/wilkelab/isoband/blob/70171cf6dae6fdd55f92b946eb04db8c9a41e97b/src/test-clip-lines.cpp#L372-L387
So it's the error that isn't properly caught. I can fix the problem by skipping these particular tests, but maybe @jimhester knows whether and how it's possible to test for errors in C++ code.

[clauswilke]

Ok, seems like expect_error() catches exceptions rather than calls to Rf_error():
https://testthat.r-lib.org/reference/use_catch.html#functions
Not sure why this has ever worked in the past.

Is it possible to write some C or C++ code that catches calls to Rf_error(), so we can convert that call into a bool that we can test with expect_true()?

[clauswilke]

I've simply disabled the tests for invalid input. So I'm going to close this issue. Updated version of isoband is on CRAN.