Re: Not running tests because tests miss source code is not useful
Draft text for the GR (this is my first time proposing a GR text, so
help is welcome to make the text clearer).
We should not worry about minified files in main that are (a) only in
the source package and not in any binary package, and (b) only used to
run tests, not to build the binary packages.
To ensure these are not used during generation of binary packages, a
nocheck build profile should be provided which will remove these files
from the build environment.
Rationale: Most of the time these minified files create a specific
instance of a test case and these tests are not the only way to ensure
functionality of the code we ship. Even though upstream runs these
tests, during transitions we deviate from upstream for runtime
dependencies and a way to ensure the functionality is not broken by a
dependency change is essential. Insisting these test cases are built
using only packages in main just makes running tests harder and
disabing tests is choosen as an easier option. Treating the code used
to run only tests is the same as generated code we ship is not useful.
In case of the code we ship missing sources, our users can't modify the
software. But if these sourceless code is used during tests, only
ability to modify the test cases is lost. A test case is an arbitrary
combination of the code and we have many different ways of testing a
code.
Option 1: Agree, we should allow these files in main
Option 2: Disagree, we should not allow these files in main
Option 3: Further discussion
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