Enabling test requiring network on manual builds.

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Hello, Perl team !

In a package I maintain outside pkg-perl (bioperl), I was curious to see the
results of the regression tests that are network-dependant and therefore
disabled at build time since the network is not available in (many of) the
machines hosting our build daemons.

I have done the following:

  # Test if DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS contains a ’network’ keyword.
  # If yes, network tests will be enabled.

  ifneq (,$(filter network,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS)))
  NETWORK = --network
  endif

  build: build-stamp
  build-stamp:
        dh_testdir
        perl Build.PL $(NETWORK) < /dev/null # non-interactive, uses defaults
(…)

However, according to a search in the Debian package, this is specific to
Bioperl:

http://walrus.rave.org/source/search?q=network&path=Build.PL

Are there more generic mechanisms to manage network-dependant tests?

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan