Bug#834890: commons-math: FTBFS with probability > 0 in a deliberate way

[Santiago Vila]

Package: src:commons-math
Version: 2.2-5
Severity: serious

Dear maintainer:

I tried to build this package with "dpkg-buildpackage -A"
(which is what the "Arch: all" autobuilder would do to build it)
but it failed:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[...]
 debian/rules build-indep
dh_listpackages: -s/--same-arch is deprecated; please use -a/--arch instead
test -x debian/rules
mkdir -p "."
/usr/share/maven-debian-helper/copy-repo.sh /<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/debian
find: '/usr/share/maven-repo/org/codehaus/plexus/plexus-compiler/*/*.jar': No such file or directory
find: '/usr/share/maven-repo/org/codehaus/plexus/plexus-compilers/*/*.jar': No such file or directory
find: '/usr/share/maven-repo/org/codehaus/plexus/plexus-containers/*/*.jar': No such file or directory
mh_patchpoms -plibcommons-math-java --debian-build --keep-pom-version --maven-repo=/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/debian/maven-repo 
touch debian/stamp-poms-patched
# before-build target may be used to unpatch the pom files, so we need to check if
# patching the pom files is needed here, normally not
if [ ! -f pom.xml.save ]; then \

[... snipped ...]

Tests run: 3, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.001 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.genetics.BinaryChromosomeTest
Running org.apache.commons.math.genetics.TournamentSelectionTest
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.002 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.genetics.TournamentSelectionTest
Running org.apache.commons.math.genetics.RandomKeyMutationTest
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.002 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.genetics.RandomKeyMutationTest
Running org.apache.commons.math.genetics.OnePointCrossoverTest
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.004 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.genetics.OnePointCrossoverTest
Running org.apache.commons.math.genetics.GeneticAlgorithmTestBinary
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.027 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.genetics.GeneticAlgorithmTestBinary
Running org.apache.commons.math.geometry.Vector3DTest
Tests run: 18, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.016 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.geometry.Vector3DTest
Running org.apache.commons.math.geometry.Vector3DFormatTest
Tests run: 28, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.021 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.geometry.Vector3DFormatTest
Running org.apache.commons.math.geometry.RotationOrderTest
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.002 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.geometry.RotationOrderTest
Running org.apache.commons.math.geometry.RotationTest
Tests run: 12, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.145 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.geometry.RotationTest
Running org.apache.commons.math.geometry.FrenchVector3DFormatTest
Tests run: 28, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.008 sec - in org.apache.commons.math.geometry.FrenchVector3DFormatTest

Results :

Failed tests: 
  GammaDistributionTest>ContinuousDistributionAbstractTest.testSampling:275 Chisquare test failed p-value = 7.68153812779615E-4 chisquare statistic = 16.823999999999998. 
value	expected	observed
1	250		230
2	250		296
3	250		211
4	250		263
This test can fail randomly due to sampling error with probability 0.001.

Tests run: 2461, Failures: 1, Errors: 0, Skipped: 2

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 35.898 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2016-08-20T08:57:22+02:00
[INFO] Final Memory: 7M/17M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-surefire-plugin:2.17:test (default-test) on project commons-math: There are test failures.
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] Please refer to /<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/target/surefire-reports for the individual test results.
[ERROR] -> [Help 1]
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/MojoFailureException
/usr/share/cdbs/1/class/maven.mk:127: recipe for target 'debian/stamp-maven-check' failed
make: *** [debian/stamp-maven-check] Error 1
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules build-indep gave error exit status 2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tests are supposed to be always successful.

Sometimes we have packages having tests which fail randomly. Some
people forgive them because we don't know the reason why they fail.

But this package has a test which fails randomly with a known
probability, and it is not designed to be always successful.

I don't think that's acceptable at all.


Once you disable the test that fail randomly, please consider
uploading the package in source-only form, so that we get pretty
official build logs here:

https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=commons-math

Thanks.