[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#986410: autopkg tests don't run with the same dependencies as during the build

[Étienne Mollier]

Hi Andreas,

Andreas Tille, on 2021-08-22:
> On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 06:11:25PM +0200, Étienne Mollier wrote:
> > On Sat, 10 Jul 2021 00:13:25 +0200 =?utf-8?Q?=C3=89tienne?= Mollier <emollier at emlwks999.eu> wrote:
> > > The only concern I have is the maintainability of a full_suite
> > > test, since there are no needs-build-deps restrictions,
> > …but there is a special @builddeps@ for the Depends: field!
> > I rediscovered it yesterday; that will be much more maintainable
> > this way.
> 
> I'm not sure but I somehow remember that @builddeps@ is deprecated.  I'd
> be really happy to learn that I'm wrong here since I like the concept
> but I vaguely remember that this should not be used any more.  So please
> double check.

Double checking in autopkgtest documentation [1], I see no
mention of @builddeps@ being deprecated apparently:

|    ``@builddeps@`` will be replaced by the package's
|    ``Build-Depends:``, ``Build-Depends-Indep:``, ``Build-Depends-Arch:``, and
|    ``build-essential``. This is useful if you have many build
|    dependencies which are only necessary for running the test suite and
|    you don't want to replicate them in the test ``Depends:``. However,
|    please use this sparingly, as this can easily lead to missing binary
|    package dependencies being overlooked if they get pulled in via
|    build dependencies.

[1]: /usr/share/doc/autopkgtest/README.package-tests.rst.gz

From the same file, it is the needs-recommends which has similar
behavior, by installing recommended packages, but which is
marked deprecated indeed; maybe it is the deprecation you were
recalling:

|needs-recommends (deprecated)
|    Enable installation of recommended packages in apt for the test
|    dependencies. This does not affect build dependencies.
|
|    Don't use this for new tests, we want to remove it altogether.
|    See https://lists.debian.org/debian-ci/2018/06/msg00016.html
|    and bug 896698 for the rationale.

Given the warning in @builddeps@ paragraph, it seems that it
might be prudent to make the full test skippable, in case some
packages are not available on some architecture.  So, Thanks for
making me double check!

Have a nice day,  :)
-- 
Étienne Mollier <emollier at emlwks999.eu>
Fingerprint:  8f91 b227 c7d6 f2b1 948c  8236 793c f67e 8f0d 11da
Sent from /dev/pts/2, please excuse my verbosity.
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