Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH RFC] tests: always build test programs

[Peter Maydell]

On 26 February 2016 at 13:09, Daniel P. Berrange <address@hidden> wrote:
> It is easy to miss that a change broke compilation of a unit
> test unless you always remember to run 'make check-unit' for
> every patch. Hook build of unit test programs into the 'all'
> target so that they are built by default.
>
> Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrange <address@hidden>
> ---
>  tests/Makefile | 2 ++
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
>
> Note sure if this is considered to be desirable in general
> or not. We did this in libvirt a while back because it
> stopped people submitting patches which broke build of
> the unit tests. On the downside it means more code is
> built by default. Perhaps it could be on by default but
> with a --disable-tests to let people optionally disble
> it ? Without this, if people want to check unit test
> they'd curently do 'make && make check-unit' which takes
> longer because that actually runs the unit tests as well
> as bulding them - there's no target just to build them.

I think we should be encouraging people to run the tests,
not just build them (and indeed to run 'make check' rather
than just 'make check-unit'). Conversely, if you're not
going to run the test suite there's not much point building it.

> NB, tests/qemu-iotests/socket_scm_helper is already set
> to build by default, so we're a bit inconsistent about
> rules for building test suite artifacts currently.

I think that's a bug which we should fix. It should only
be built if you try to run the test or tests that use it.

thanks
-- PMM