Re: Regression testing of tetex
Dear all, dear Uekawa-san!
On Die, 14 Mär 2006, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
> > Did you notice that this sounds as if you were accusing Norbert of being
> > lazy, and/or of bad package quality? I don't think this is acceptable,
>
> I didn't meant to be insulting; it was some byproduct of my careless
> choice of words. Apologies for any offence. I didn't mean it.
No offence taken, really.
> 1. Upstream point of view: extensively testing every style file etc,
> so that we have enough coverage and high-quality tex distribution.
Impossible. What upstream do we mean? In TeX live and in teTeX there is
upstream (texlive mailing list and Thomas Esser), and up-upstream
(package authors etc).
I am sure that it is impossible to convince TeX live people to test
every package. It runs like this: An update to a package is installed
into CTAN, and normally quite regular one of the tl guys updates the
files in TeX live from CTAN packages (using ctan2tds scroipt). There is
no checking at all, this is the responsibility of upupstream.
> 2. Debian point of view: assume upstream has already done some
> QA. Debian is adding some packaging scripts, and they need to be
> tested on top. To make sure the Debian-added portions work,
> implement some kind of 'package install -- build tex file -- check
> result' script.
I agree. My current scripts do automatic
install old version, upgrade to new, remove new, install new,
purge new, install new
in a normal pbuilder environment for each of the 70+ packages (takes
about 15 hours). Furthermore a switch-from-tetex test is run (install
tetex-*, install texlive and see if it breaks).
Testing of functionality for me is done in real world, as I am daily
using my TeX system.
> Debian doesn't need an extensive scripting; we need some kind of
> minimal test that checks for some fonts, some stylesheets, some
> hyphenation, some dvi->ps->pdf dvi->pdf translation, so that what
> we're generating under /etc/texmf and /var/lib/texmf are somewhat
> correct.
That would be perfect to have something like this. If someone starts
writing some minimal scripts for this, I will happily be one of the
first to include them into my test scripts and report.
> Yup. Except my packages and the packages I sponsor, which tend to have
> testsuites. :P
Well, so you are the perfect candidate ;-)
Best wishes
Norbert
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