Re: dpkg debian9 testing question

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

[ Sorry, just fished out your mail from my spambox, due to the html part. ]

Hi!

On Fri, 2018-06-29 at 13:47:19 +0700, Nguyen Van Long wrote:
> I'm trying to testing how to dpkg package work on debian9.

It would be interesting to know the motivation behind this, in case it
might deserve a different answer. For example, in case you would like
to work on improving the test suites, etc.

> So my questions are:
> 
> 1.       Currently, are there existing any way/support to test in dpkg
> source package?

There are currently:

  * A unit test suite covering the C libdpkg code, and the perl code, and
    a functional test suite covering the update-alternatives, dpkg-deb,
    dpkg-split and dpkg-divert commands in the dpkg.git repo itself. 
    These get run on «make check» or «make distcheck». See the README.
  * A functional test suite in the dpkg-tests.git repo. You need
    either and installed dpkg.deb or to tell the test suite where a
    built dpkg.git repo can be found. See its README for instructions.

> 2.       Can you suggest some tools like "autopkgtest" to test dpkg or even
> other packages?

Eventually the external functional test suite should get merged into
the main repo, and be made available via autopkgtest, so that we get
migration gating support, and retriggered on dependency changes. But
these should still be run during a normal build, as then we get full
architecture coverage.

The other way dpkg gets tested, is by some of us installing and using
packages built from git master. And eventually by others while dpkg
gets released into unstable. :)

Thanks,
Guillem