Bug#986527: sagemath: FTBFS: how to address for Bullseye

[John Scott]

On Tue, 08 Jun 2021 17:15:44 +0200 Julien Puydt wrote:
> I've been convinced that getting a fragile sagemath in next stable
> wouldn't be a good thing.
You've put much more effort than I have into maintaining scientific
software in Debian, so I respect your opinion, but is it really
accurate to say that SageMath is fragile as a whole?

With respect to this particular issue, I'd like to share my perspective
wrangling with a package that poses a similar dilemma: GCC (I'm working
on packaging gcc-sh-elf). Like the status quo with SageMath in Debian,
GCC has a test suite where failures are normal, and in general it takes
an individual to watch out for what number of failures counts as "too
many." Rather than hardcode an arbitrary threshold for what number of
failing tests is acceptable, it seems that it's much better, and in the
interest of Debian ports and alternative build environments, to just
let the tests run for informative purposes.

This, I believe, is what the GCC team actually does; the test results
get sent to the team mailing list IIRC. Perhaps we should take a
similar philosophy towards the tests.

At least with GCC and DejaGnu, the test results get written out to a
file, so before a new upload, say, one can do a diff on the old and new
test results and see if any new regressions were introduced. In this
same respect, SageMath test results may be best consulted before new
uploads by hand.

I believe it's in the best interest of Debian users that this bug be
downgraded for Bullseye so Sage can be used in the mostly-wholesome
shape it's in, but since I lack expertise in maintaining it I too will
leave this to someone else.
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