[gentoo-dev] Ebuild pre-install testing?

[John Karp]

A lot of software projects have automated tests that can be run to make 
sure the program behaves correctly, like gcc, glibc, mozilla, perl, 
python, and flac, and many others. It should be possible to have them 
tested as part of a normal emerge. I'm aware that a few are tested by 
default, but for my own system I'd like to have it set up so that if 
there are tests available, they are always run.

I'm aware that some people wouldn't want to spend time doing all the 
checks, so it could be a system-wide option. There are a couple ways 
this could be done... either a new ebuild step, or a new use flag. If 
there were a use flag, the ebuilds with tests would simply need to add 
'use test && make check || die' after the compile step, and before the 
install.

That is ackward, because it doesn't really fit in the with either the 
compiling or installing stages. Plus, ebuild writers wouldn't feel 
compelled to heed the USE tag, since the ebuild would `work' without it. 
So there could be src_test step, set to run "make check" by default-- 
which works 90% of the time anyway. If a program is missing a test set, 
the ebuild writer would just have to add an empty src_test section to 
the ebuild.

Thoughts?

-John Karp