How we test(ed) the Futhark compiler

In this post I will go through the evolution of the tools we use for testing the Futhark compiler. Along the way, these also became futhark test, the user-facing tool for testing Futhark programs, and although rather convenient, it is still pretty crude compared to the testing tools you will find in other languages. This post is perhaps most interesting to other language implementation hobbyists.

For reference, Futhark is an up-and-coming language for writing efficient parallel code, sort of like a more functional (Haskell-like) version of CUDA or OpenCL.