Bug#827907: RFS: evil/1.2.12-1 ITP

[Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>]

Hello,

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 01:28:00PM +0300, Dmitry Bogatov wrote:
> > > Here is script, that does same as dh_elpa_test:
> > > [...]
> > > It reports 22 failures. If I replace -batch with -nw, all tests
> > > passes. So seems tty is really needed, but I do not understand why.
> >
> > This is not what dh_elpa_test is actually running ;)
> 
> Well, I was not explicit enough.
> 
> > In the worst case, if we can confirm that some of tests really do
> > require a tty (it would be good to figure out why -- maybe ask
> > upstream?), you can add a patch disabling those tests in particular.
> 
> Simple. Replace in upstream Makefile -nw with -batch and get 22 failures.
> So I think we should accept it -- no tests for us.

I just talked to David Bremner about this.  He suggested looking at the
notmuch-emacs source package.  Although its test suite does not use
dh_elpa_test (because it does not use ERT or Buttercup), it too requires
emacs -nw and fails with emacs -batch.  To deal with this, the d/rules
file wraps emacs in dtach.

It would be great if you could make the evil test suite run by using
dtach.  You won't be able to use dh_elpa_test directly -- maybe you
could use

    override_dh_elpa_test:
        dtach --foo --bar -- dh_elpa_test

or just drop to compat level 9 and use override_dh_auto_test.

If you can make it work, I could add this as a dh_elpa_test feature.
Let me know if I can help you.  David also suggested asking him in
#debian-emacs on OFTC, or in #notmuch on freenode.  Since evil is likely
to be a popular package, we should definitely get its test suite running.

> > Nice work.  Have you forwarded the fix upstream?
> 
> Too much trouble. To fix it upstream, they have to deal with either:
>  [...]
>  * evil mode is autoloaded, interactive and with sane description. Ugliness
>    in code.

Do you know whether the problem if Debian-specific, or if it also arises
when installing evil from MELPA?

-- 
Sean Whitton