Re: package testing, autopkgtest, and all that

[Michael Hanke <mih@debian.org>]

On Wed, Feb 02, 2011 at 05:13:21PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Michael Hanke writes ("Re: package testing, autopkgtest, and all that"):
> > I see the point in having less by better-quality input to package
> > maintainers, but again, the test results do not have to go one-by-one to
> > a human to inspect.
> 
> We don't have any infrastructure for dealing with this kind of
> information in bulk.  I think that what you are proposing is a
> different kind of thing to autopkgtest and it would be best for us to
> deploy autopkgtest now as it already exists.

This being the second missing piece of infrastructure that is mentioned in this
thread, and IMHO worth thinking about.

> > There are various labs that are very interested in verifying that
> > "random" library updates don't break their systems, which can happen
> > with any update.
> 
> This is easily done with autopkgtest; the only difference from your
> proposal is that the source package needs to be downloaded.  Doing so
> is not difficult or troublesome, and can be done automatically.

Fair enough.

In the context of a DEP the question remains whether we want to hammer
it in stone that separately distributed upstream testsuites need to be
source packaged and build dummy binary packages?

Moreover, I'm begining to wonder what the scope of this DEP would be:
any type of testing done in Debian, or a limited subset like per-package
unit/regression tests?

Michael

-- 
Michael Hanke
http://mih.voxindeserto.de