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Re: Policy Change Proposal: Running the upstream test suite



On 2024-07-30 11:09, Scott Kitterman wrote:


On July 30, 2024 12:49:50 AM UTC, "Louis-Philippe Véronneau" <pollo@debian.org> wrote:
On 2024-07-29 21:07, Scott Kitterman wrote:


On July 29, 2024 8:53:11 AM UTC, "Louis-Philippe Véronneau" <pollo@debian.org> wrote:
Hello,

As discussed during the DebConf24 Python BoF, I'm submitting this change to the policy to require the use of the upstream test suite, both during the build process and as an autopkgtest.

You can find the MR here:

https://salsa.debian.org/python-team/tools/python-modules/-/merge_requests/24

People present at the BoF seemed to think this was a good idea. If you don't please reply to this message and make yourself heard :)

I understand the theory and why it's a good idea to run the test suite.  I don't think it ought to be a hard requirement.  I have several packages where there's a test suite, but I don't run it:

1.  The largest set is packages that need test only dependencies which are not packaged.  When I am packaging something new which has a test suite, then I generally package any needed test depends. If those test depends also need test depends packaged, I generally stop and don't enable tests for things that are only in the archives to support tests.  Noseofyeti is an example of this.

That sounds like a valid technical reason not to run the tests to me :)

2.  There's at least one case where Debian has customizations that cause the test suite to fail, but the failures don't seem to cause any real problems.  If anyone wants to make it so the weasyprint test suite works on Debian, please knock yourself out.

Again, as long as you document that, I don't think it would go against the proposed policy change.

3.  I also maintain multiple packages which require network access to run their test suite, so they can't run tests during build, only autopkgtests.

Same.


Except for #3, I don't get that from the wording in the MR.  I don't think not worth the trouble is a technical reason.  I think the real rule that's being proposed is that packages must run the test suit or document why not.  I don't have a problem with that, but I don't think that's what it actually says now.  I think if you were to change must to should and strike the word technical before reason, it would accomplish the same thing and be clearer.  I could support that.

Language is hard and I'm not a native English speaker :)

What I want to prevent is people not running tests because they don't feel like it, even though it would not take them a large amount of efforts to do so.

I'll strike "technical", as it seems others also interpreted this word they way you have.

As for "MUST" vs "SHOULD", I believe the exception clause provides enough leeway to justify a reasonable way out in case of $VALID_REASON.

"SHOULD" is not particularly strong and again, I fear it would let people get away with not running tests although it wouldn't be much work to do so...

--
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Louis-Philippe Véronneau
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   pollo@debian.org / veronneau.org
  ⠈⠳⣄


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