[Bug 520505] Spurious dependency on perl(Test::More)

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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=520505





--- Comment #9 from Stepan Kasal <skasal at redhat.com>  2009-09-05 08:06:05 EDT ---
(In reply to comment #8)
> Yes, there are exceptions and _sometimes_ packaging the test suites or parts of
> them might be beneficial. [...] document a good rationale for including that stuff

Sounds fair, tests should not be packed by default.

But I'd like to comment some of your reasons:

> if upstream docs aren't good enough it'd be better to let upstream know about
> that and ask them to improve things so more people would benefit; etc.

Sure, it is necessary to report the problem, if upstream does not know or
underestiomates its importance.  But then, packing the tests is a good
temporary aid until sufficient documentation becomes available.

> [...] kind of encourages bad practices such as
> mentioned by Chris in his mail referred to in comment 2 (installing packages in
> system locations and _then_ after the fact thinking about running test suites);

Generally, tests can be run on uninstalled software, or after instalation. 
Ideally, both kind of tests are performed; this can often be done by rerunning
the same test suite.  (GNU Coding Standards define two make targets: "check"
and "installcheck".)  rpm's %check does test uninnstalled software, but the
spec files have no way to describe tests on installed program.

There are situations when the tests cannot be run from the spec file, e.g.,
because they require GUI or because they require a running database server.

You seem to imply that enabling install time checking somehow discourages
proper use of build time testing.  I cannot agree with that.

If the tests cannot be (fully) performed at build time, it is useful to pack
them, so that the user has chance to run them before deploying the module.

Again, this reason justifies packing tests only as a temporary aid, because
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FullyTestablePerl would render this type
of reasoning irrelevant.

To sum up, if tests are packed, comment should contain a reason, e.g.:
- the tests show example usage, supplementing incomplete documentation
- the tests cannot be fully performed at build time because of xyxz

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