[Debian-med-packaging] r16448 - in trunk/packages/python-biopython/trunk/debian: . patches tests

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Philipp,

On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 09:50:25PM +0100, Philipp Benner wrote:
> I've seen that some packages also include the tests at build-time.
> If a package contains only some minor tests which do not require many
> additional packages, then I agree that it might be convenient. For
> biopython the tests are however quite extensive. With autopkgtest
> we have a very nice way to separate build dependencies from test
> dependencies, which in my opinion shouldn't be mixed. So why not take
> advantage of this?

IMHO it is no advantage at all to leave out a chance whether a package
is properly built or not.  I have no idea how frequent the autopkgtest
is run on different architectures.  IMHO it is essential that we on one
hand are testing the package itself on all architectures at built time
(and be able to inspect the logs of this) and not trusting that the
autopkgtesters will file a bug report manually about a low popcon
package on a rarely used architecture.  On the other hand I also would
never miss a chance to test all those packages in our focus since it
might be that not BioPython is wrong but the software it calls might not
work properly.

Our final goal is to deliver properly packages and I do not see in how
far it is extensive in terms of manpower to leave these tests in.  Yes,
it consumes some compute power but that's nitpicking compared to other
packages.

>From my point a complete build should run all possible tests that have
a chance to run successfully and in this sense test dependencies are
build-dependencies.

Kind regards

    Andreas.

PS: Perhaps this topic should be dicussed on debian-devel at l.d.o

-- 
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