Re: openpty: Skip test if no pty is available

[Guido Günther]

Hi Bruno,
On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 07:07:38PM +0100, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Guido Günther wrote:
> > In chroots for package builds there may be no ptys or they might not be
> > accessible. This both manifests as ENOENT on Linux. Skip tests in this
> > case.
> 
> I'm not a fan of this patch, because it reduces the value of the test:
> It would only test whether the openpty() function could open a pty or
> maybe could not open a pty. Pretty worthless. If a future change to
> the implementation would break the openpty() function, the unit test would
> no longer notice it.
> 
> Can you search for alternatives?
> 
> One possibility is that you find how to identify such "chroot environments".
> Are there some environment variables which signal it? Are there some system
> calls (not related to ptys) that would give a hint?
> 
> Another possibility is that, for those packages which you intend to test in a
> chroot environment, you omit the test, i.e. use gnulib-tool with argument
> --avoid=openpty-tests. I would find this better than to destroy the value of
> the test for everyone.

Thanks for having a look. Let's drop these then and I'll skip them
during the build.
Cheers,
 -- Guido