[Fedora-packaging] should I include tests in the package?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 04/30/2012 04:22 PM, "Germán A. Racca" wrote:
> On 04/30/2012 11:09 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Germ=E1n_A=2E_Racca=22?=<german.racca at gmail.com>
>> writes:
>>> I'm the packager of APLpy: http://aplpy.github.com/
>>> I'm going to update it to a new version, which comes with a set of
>>> tests, but I'm not sure about what to do with them.
>>
>> I think you do want to make the tests available to users, but they don't
>> necessarily have to be part of the base package.
>> If the tests are large relative to the base package, a fairly common
>> solution is to split them out into a sub-package, say aplpy-test.
>>
>> (This is in addition to running them during the build.)
>>
>> regards, tom lane
>
> Hi Tom:
>
> $ du -sh aplpy/
> 300K aplpy/
>
> $ du -sh tests/
> 192K tests/
>
> So I think that a split is not needed in this case.

This reasoning is dangerous:

a) Testsuites usually pull in further dependencies, which are not 
required by the corresponding runtimes and therefore cause bloat.

b) If everybody thinks the "These 100k more don't matter" way, the 
distro very soon will have problems.


That said, my pragmatical recommendation would be

a) Only explicitly package a testsuite, if upstream explicitly support 
this (I.e. if "make install" or similar install this testsuite). And if, 
do so in a separate package.

b) Check carefully, if a test is actually designed to be externally 
(often this does not apply) or if it's an internal "self-testsuite".

Apart of this, experience tells, *-test packages cause more trouble 
thany they use and often are removed in not too distant future.


Ralf