Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Perl self-tests

[Dylan Carlson]

On Tue October 26 2004 03:52, Duncan wrote:
> As an AMD64 user myself, I'd tend to agree with this.  Programming
> languages are and should remain an exception.  I don't have maketest on,
> but for gcc, perl, python, etc, I'd expect it to continue to run the
> tests (as I would with glibc).  The alternatives are just too unpleasant
> to think about, including the one where bugs get filed on the wrong apps
> because that's where they appear, while it was the on-site installation
> of the language interpreter/compiler used to run/compile them that was
> the problem.

I'm not advocating disabling tests one way or another.  GCC's testing is 
critical, since it is the Sweet Mother of Everything.  Python is critical 
to Gentoo.  I don't offhand know what Python does during compile & install 
(and I'm not going to remerge it just for this email, ;).  Perl is not as 
vital at the core, but almost always installed because of a dependency 
somewhere.

In the absence solving a particular problem, my inclination is there should 
be wiggle room to make tests optional.  The tests seem merely a sanity 
check to me.  Given that perl only has 3 people managing 400+ packages, it 
doesn't surprise me these tests are forced.  There's probably not enough 
manpower to test every angle on every arch.  Also, if the tests are a 
significant problem for many users, we would have heard more complaints... 
I think.  I raised the issue in principle only.

On making it optional... I guess it depends on whether we intend to run the 
tests by default or not.   -maketest to disable tests-by-default would be 
ugly.  That's illegal usage, IMO.  Alternative: create a local USE, e.g. 
'noperltests', move the tests out of src_test, skip tests if flag is set.

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@g.o]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F


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