Re: "Debian CI/autopkgtest BoF" at Debconf18

[Martin Pitt <mpitt@debian.org>]

Simon McVittie [2018-08-02  9:59 +0100]:
> On Thu, 02 Aug 2018 at 06:49:33 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > ## unsatisfiable test-dependencies should not be a test failure
> > DON'T use apt in your script
> > Use flaky restriction + it needs a fix in autopkgtest to properly support that
> >   (as mentioned by Ralf Treinen, it doesn't work yet).
> 
> Sorry, I don't follow. Do you mean "don't use apt in your script, ever"

I would also recommend to use apt-get, not literally "apt". The latter is nice
for interactive command line usage, but too fancy/graphical for logged script
output, and its CLI is not stable.

But I suppose you really meant "apt-get" as well here. Why should that be
flaky? Because of unstable mirrors or something?

> (Some useful test cases can't really avoid using apt, in particular the
> ones for debootstrap and nss-mdns.)

Yeah, that. I also encountered or even wrote tests where it was inevitable to
do some pre-setup or a particular order or something else which you can't
express through a declarative Depends:. Or you want to test an apt related
package :)

Thanks!

Martin