Hello, On Sun 12 Sep 2021 at 07:07PM +01, Simon McVittie wrote: > I see lintian has recently started emitting warnings for packages that > have autopkgtests, but only superficial autopkgtests. I think this is > counterproductive. > > Obviously, if a package can have reliable autopkgtests that are not > superficial (not always feasible!), then we would prefer to have those. > > However, if non-superficial autopkgtests are not achievable, then it's > *considerably* better to have superficial autopkgtests than no coverage > at all - a superficial test, like running "foo --help" and checking > that it doesn't segfault or linking a trivial program to a library and > checking that it can link, can at least check that the package is not > *completely* broken (perhaps in time to stop a serious regression in the > package or a dependency from migrating to testing). I agree, and would like to see the new tag downgraded below the W: level. It is not always a bug of greater severity than "wishlist" that a package doesn't have non-superficial autopkgtests. Perhaps it would be a bug of a greater severity for some packages, based on certain roles they might have, but not in general. I would also note that Policy doesn't say anything about the degree to which it is valuable to have autopkgtests -- unlike, for example, how it says that all installed programs should have manpages. -- Sean Whitton
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