Re: git repositories for cygwin packaging - please test

[Ken Brown <kbrown@cornell.edu>]

On 8/7/2020 3:42 PM, Achim Gratz wrote:
> Jon Turney writes:
>> One problem I have noticed is that some packages have test suites
>> (which are getting run via 'cygport test' invoking src_test()) which:
>>
>> - require lots of extra dependencies to run, or
> 
> I currently subsume these in BUILD_REQUIRES as they are indeed required
> for a (complete) build.  It'd be possible to split them out into a
> separate variable indeed, but that is yet another level of
> specificatrion that needs to be figured out if it should become useful.
> 
>> - don't succeed on Cygwin, or
> 
> Any such tests I usually patch out or mark expected fail whichever seems
> easier.
> 
>> - take an inordinate amount of time to run (exceeding the resource limits)
> 
> That is a problem that comes with CI I think and we didn't really have
> had to consider so far.  I have a few packages that I don't run tests on
> by default because the test suite produces hangs or other unstable
> behaviour, but that is dealt with in the src_test function itself.
> If there are really resource hungry tests they usually need to be
> enabled somewhere and one could skip those if the build runs on CIm (how
> to find that out?).

Here's an example where Jon's suggestion would have been useful: While building 
php recently, I noticed that the test suite took forever.  I would have been 
happy to have a way to tell the CI to skip the tests and avoid exceeding the 
resource limits.  But I wouldn't want to do that by modifying src_test, because 
I would still want to run the tests locally.

Ken