Re: Q&A for OCaml package: a few ideas
Hello Stefano,
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:40, Stefano Zacchiroli<zack@debian.org> wrote:
>> So, I'm thinking at a kind of script that would:
>> - trigger an install or update of the binary package[1] and verifies
>> the package is correctly installed;
>> - launch a simple test of the program (at least "prog --version" or
>> "prog --help") for both byte code and native code versions.
>
> I think this approach will be quite pointless: --help and --version
> are standard in GNU(-like) apps, but are not there very often for
> OCaml programs.
Sorry, I wasn't precise enough. I wanted to say: write a specific set
of tests *per binary package* that runs the binaries. So it could be
"-version" or "--version" or whatever depending of the package.
> The appropriate place where to do that however, is not an external
> program, but something that is integrated in the build process and
> which is automatically triggered on the appropriate packages without
> need package-specific actions. Today, this place is the dh-ocaml
> package.
I'm not so sure. More exactly, I think the two approaches are
complementary. While the dh-ocaml tests could be more generic and thus
automatic, they won't test the final binary, installed in the proper
place in /usr with associated configuration file.
Well, apparently there is not much done in this area. I'll try to dig
a bit more and show you anything I might have more concrete.
Yours,
d.
PS: All OCaml developers are not that allergic to unit tests. In my
own program I have execution time unit test per module. ;-)
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