Re: Removing packages from Octave Forge

[Mike Miller]

On Fri, 10 Jan 2014 07:22:58 -0500, Thomas Weber wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 11:09:33AM +0100, Alexander Barth wrote:
>> To improve code quality, I would rather suggest to ask the maintainers (if
>> they can be reached) to add a test script to their package which verifies
>> the functioning of the package as a whole (e.g. test_<packagename>.m). 
> 
> At least for Debian, that is not needed. We run all (non-interactive)
> tests in .m and .cc files when building a package. Now, in theory, a
> failing test should prevent the package from being uploaded. In
> practice, some packages have long-standing failures in their testsuite.

Even outside of Debian, we don't need new syntax or new conventions for
running package tests. Please, please, do not start committing test
scripts to package repositories. Just write %!test blocks for your
functions and use Octave's runtests command. If anything, maybe file a
wishlist bug for a "pkg test" command that is just a thin wrapper around
runtests.

-- 
mike