Re: [gentoo-dev] tests

[Danny van Dyk <kugelfang@gentoo.org>]

Hi Daniel,

Am Mittwoch, 2. Mai 2007 schrieb Daniel Gryniewicz:
> Honestly, tests are nice, but too many of them are broken upstream,
> and we are not (and should not be, IMO) in the position of fixing
> them all. If a developer wants to work with her upstream to fix the
> tests in her packages, great and more power to her.  Most of us are
> swamped just supporting them, let alone fixing test cases.  You
> really need an upstream who cares a lot about tests for the tests to
> be meaningful and work.  Lots of upstreams don't currently care, and
> have inherited obsolete and (now) broken tests from previous
> maintainers.
When you read Piotr's original mail carefully, you will see that he 
lists 'non-functional' as category, and nobody keeps you from declaring 
your packages' test-suites as such. However, keep in mind that several 
other maintainers don't have so many problems with their test-suites.

> I think this thread in general overestimates the value of tests in
> packages.  I think we will find, if we go through the effort, that
> more of them are useless and/or broken than are useful.  My 2 cents.
As a member of the sci team I have to say I completely disagree with you 
here. sci-* packages mostly have reasonable test suites, the importance 
to run them is very high (you do want reproducable and correct results, 
don't you?). However, sometimes you cannot run those tests from an 
ebuild's environment, for example when you need a running x-server.

Danny
-- 
Danny van Dyk <kugelfang@gentoo.org>
Gentoo/AMD64 Project, Gentoo Scientific Project
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list