tests in %doc?

[Chris Weyl]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 6:47 AM, Jason L Tibbitts III<tibbs at math.uh.edu> wrote:
>>>>>> "SK" == Stepan Kasal <skasal at redhat.com> writes:
>
> SK> Hello, I have noticed that some of the perl module packages do pack
> SK> their tests in the %doc subdirectory. Is that intentional?
>
> One maintainer insists on doing it.  I think it's pointless, but I gave
> up arguing long ago.

Yeah... Boy did people get worked up about that :) I was doing it for
a couple reasons:

It's not unusual for the tests to be better than the docs...
especially for examples of how to do things: I can't speak for anyone
else but I routinely look at tests when the POD doesn't do an amazing
job cluing me in.  It's not unusual to see POD refer the reader to the
tests, as well.  This seems to be particularly true of some of the
faster-moving packages, like early Moose and Catalyst.

Another reason is that sometimes we make changes to the tests as part
of the packaging.  One of the nice things about having them available
in %_docdir is that they can be run on your system.  And, sometimes
it's nice to be able to rerun the _actual_ tests after making upgrades
to part of a module's dependency chain...  Though, ideally we'd have
things rigged such that someone could retest, say, all their installed
MooseX::* after a perl-Moose (or perl-Class-MOP or ...) upgrade.
IMHO, something like this could substantially help Fedora/RedHat's
somewhat tarnished (deservedly or not, no judgement here) image w.r.t.
Perl QA.  But I digress :)

In any case, I've generally suspended this pending some magic to
automagically package them up -- e.g., create a -tests subpackage the
way -debuginfo packages are automatically created; allowing the tests
to be available w/o having them in %_docdir.  There are a couple
different ways to do this, ranging from fully automated (extending
%debug_package or the like) to a macro explicitly invoked.  I haven't
had a chance to work on this in quite some time, but there are some
preliminary pages out at:

  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FullyTestablePerl
  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FullyTestablePerl/RpmMacros

One of the blockers here is touching base with either p5p or (more
likely) perl-qa, for some guidance as to where to keep tests.  If
memory serves, there was some previous discussion in those realms
about doing something like this, so coordinating -- or at least making
them aware, with a possibility for input -- would be good.

                                      -Chris
-- 
Chris Weyl
Ex astris, scientia