Bug#806420: debian-edu: test suite times out on ci.debian.net

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Antonio Terceiro]
> Hello,

Hi.

> The debian-edu test suite is timing out on ci.debian.net.

What is the timeout value on ci.debian.net?

> I noted the test suite invokes debootstrap several times, however
> autopkgtest/DEP-8 is supposed to test the packages as installed, and I
> don't quite understand what is the point of testing several full
> debootstraps every time. Is there anything that really needs to be
> tested with a full debootstrap and not with just installing the
> relevant packages on an existing clean testbed?

The debian-edu package is a set of dynamically created metapackages that
should be installable, and the autopkgtest scripts are verifying that
they are indeed installable.  Not all the metapackages are
co-installable, and installing several of them in the same testbed do
not make sense.  This is the reason separate debootstrap environments
are used.

And some of the metapackages are huge (installing around 1.6 GiB of
software, the last time I checked), so it will take a long time to
install them.

> Also, it will help if you have separate tests (i.e. separate entries
> in debian/tests/control) for each flavor. Since the autopkgtest
> timeout is per-test, if you pack several very slow procedures into a
> single test you risk getting timeouts.

This is a good idea.  I did not do it originally as I was not aware of
such timeout problem, and wanted to keep code duplication to a minimum.

> I am blacklisting debian-edu for now, and will revisit that when this
> bug is closed.

Sad to hear this.

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen