[gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: changing the developer profile: FEATURES="test" -> FEATURES="test-fail-continue"

[Ryan Hill]

On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:11:45 +0200
"Paweł Hajdan, Jr." <phajdan.jr@g.o> wrote:

> What do you think about doing the following change in
> /usr/portage/profiles/targets/developer/make.defaults:
>
> replace "test" with "test-fail-continue" to make it just less
> frustrating (we still have a lot of test failures)
>
> Hopefully that will also make more of us use the developer profile, and
> detect test failures.
>
> What do you think?

I would say it's an improvement only because it might prevent one or two
people from completely disabling it first chance they get. :)

IMO, test failures should be given the same status as build failures.
Packages shouldn't be commited until they're fixed or bypassed.  Following
that reasoning, FEATURES="test" is the correct setting for the dev profile.
It _should_ be annoying when you hit it, that's the point.  Fix it!  What's
the point of even having a test suite if it always fails?  You'd be better off
to RESTRICT it and save yourself some bug reports from me and all the
other users you're foisting build errors on.

But in the real world it seems it's just never going to happen.  I've been
arguing this for years but people simply don't care.  It doesn't help that we
don't have any finer control than "on" or "off".  I'd like to be able to say
things like "these tests should only be run by developers" or "some failures
are normal" or "hope you have 10 hours to run this" or "don't run these as
root" or "don't run tests on arm" etc etc.  I'd like a pony while I'm at it.

Sorry about the rant.  This is one of my biggest long-standing annoyances.

Um, so yeah.  For it!


-- 
fonts,                               there's a hole in my neighbourhood
gcc-porting,                  down which of late i cannot help but fall
wxwidgets @ gentoo     EFFD 380E 047A 4B51 D2BD C64F 8AA8 8346 F9A4 0662