Re: [Pkg-octave-devel] New upload of octave-pkg-dev with autopkgtest capabilites

[Rafael Laboissière <rafael@debian.org>]

* Sébastien Villemot <sebastien@debian.org> [2017-09-01 15:55]:

> Indeed the documentation of autodep8 may not be totally clear and 
> therefore you did not fully grasp the scope of the tool.
>
> Basically autopkgtest calls autodep8 everytime it is run. Then if 
> autodep8 recognize that the package belongs to certain categories 
> (currently R, Python, Perl… packages), it dynamically creates a 
> debian/tests/control file, that will then be used by autopkgtest.
>
> Said otherwise, if we add support for Octave packages within autodep8, 
> then there is no need to create a debian/tests/control file in our 
> octave-* packages.
>
> However, I just realized that, if we want ci.debian.net to 
> automatically test our packages, then we still need to add a 
> "Testsuite: autopkgtest" header in debian/control (note that this 
> header is automatically added by dpkg when a debian/tests/control file 
> is present). However, it is possible to ask the CI team to whitelist 
> all our packages before they get uploaded with the new header. See the 
> part about autodep8 in:
>
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/12/msg00002.html
>
> You can verify the autodep8 stuff by yourself by running autopkgtest on 
> the r-cran-rsdmx package. It has no debian/tests/control, but still 
> autopkgtest will check that it correctly loads in R (however I forgot 
> to add the "Testsuite: autopkgtest" header, which means it is not 
> tested by ci.debian.net; I am going to fix that).

Thanks for the extensive explanation.  Indeed, I was not aware that 
autopkgtest calls autodep8 everytime it is run.

> So to summarize, I think we should:
>
> - add support for octave-* in autodep8 (at least for all those packages that 
>  are built with octave-pkg-dev; we may have to exclude other octave add-ons);

It should be easy to recognize the Octave-Forge packages, so that the 
other octave add-ons will be normally excluded.

> - then talk to the CI team so that they whitelist all the corresponding 
>  packages;
>
> - and add the "Testsuite: autopkgtest" header in all the git repositories (but 
>  no need to upload the packages right now).

Ok, this means that, in order to have things going, for each one of our 
packages we have to do a "manual" action, either asking for whitelisting 
or uploading a new version with the "Testsuite: autopkgtest" header.

> Let me know if this sounds good to you.

Yes, this a undoubtedly a better approach, but it will take an extra time 
until I (or someone else) make autodep8 Octave-aware.

Rafael