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Re: The need for Testsuite: autopkgtest in debian/control



Hi John,

On 14-03-2021 17:22, John Scott wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm finding conflicting information on whether, with modern versions of
> dpkg, maintainers supporting DEP-8 autopkgtests need to add a
> Testsuite: autopkgtest header in debian/control.
> 
> The specification [1] says
>    To allow test execution environments to discover packages which provide
>    tests, their source packages need to have a Testsuite: header
>    containing autopkgtest (or a value like autopkgtest-pkg-perl, see
>    below).  Multiple values get comma separated, as usual in control
>    files.  *This tag is added automatically by dpkg-source version 1.17.11
>    or later, so normally you don't need to worry about this field.*
>    
> This seems to suggest that dpkg adds the entry to the source control
> file (which seems wrong since dpkg should not modify debian/control),

And here is where the confusion lies. dpkg-source doesn't add it to
debian/control, it adds it to the source control file, the .dsc file,
see dsc(5). I understand your confusion because if it's present in the
debian/control file, it gets copied to the dsc file too.

> but this may actually be conflating the source and binary control
> files.
> 
> This other reference documentation [2] says

[2] is rather old, we should bring it in line with current behavior.

>    The fact that the package has a test suite must be declared by
>    adding a Testsuite: autopkgtest entry to the source stanza in
>    debian/control.
>    
> It seems like probably the specification is misleading and the paragraph
> should be clarified, except I don't know what it's trying to say.

How about:
 To allow test execution environments to discover packages which provide
 tests, their source packages need to have a Testsuite: header
 containing autopkgtest (or a value like autopkgtest-pkg-perl, see
 below) in their control file (.dsc).  Multiple values get comma
separated, as usual in control
 files.  This tag is added automatically by dpkg-source version 1.17.11
 or later, so normally you don't need to worry about this field.

Paul

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