Re: Removing packages from Octave Forge

[Philip Nienhuis]

Mike Miller wrote
> 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.

A noble aim, but it's simply not going to work for all cases.

In io the spreadsheet test scripts *may* be converted to tests (yes I've
looked at that some years ago), but that comes a.o., at the cost of undue
code bloat for each individual test. With consequentially inflated test
maintenance burden.
Parts could be moved to test sections; but taking the present test suite
apart would undoubtedly increase complexity for me beyond reason.
In any case I'm not going to do that in the foreseeable future. The way I've
set it up since a few years proved to be the most efficient and effective
for me (as package maintainer).

I'm not blind for the needs of distro packagers; but:
(1) Even if formal tests would run fine in their test environments, there's
still no 100 % guarantee that out there, in practice, the io package would
run fine as well. There are simply too many circumstances and requirements
beyond immediate control of packagers.
(2) Not everyone is installing Octave and OF packages through a distro
package manager. 

Having some test stuff around that interactively helps diagnosing the local
situation makes self-help and support significantly easier than %!tests that
only yield binary "pass/fail" info.

Philip




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