> in every release cycle, there were dozens of complicated failing tests
Sorry if this is a dumb question, perhaps I'm not understanding what you mean by every release cycle, but does this mean nobody in the team/company ran tests until it was time for release? That sounds like a really big everlasting wound to put a tiny git-bisect bandage on!
> does this mean nobody in the team/company ran tests until it was time for release?
The OP wrote “many platforms supported, a build could take hours, and the test suite took so long to run that it would take several days or weeks of real time to get through it all”
⇒ I think they did run tests, but typically not all of them on all platforms.