Test::Pod::Coverage tests...
Hey all--
So there's a rather spirited discussion perl packaging discussion
going on over at
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=237883 about
Test::Pod::Coverage module tests, and their importance.
The canonical approach is to insist on all tests being enabled that
possibly can -- even to the point of requiring other modules be
packaged to enable these tests. "Test as much as possible."
Test::Pod::Coverage tests don't actually test the functionality of the
module. Further, they can't tell you if that documentation is any
good, or even plain wrong. We also have a practice of disabling this
test out of hand if it fails for whatever reason... Further, usually
upstream takes the step of explicitly requiring this test be enabled
-- e.g. via TEST_POD=1 or some other mechanism.
Documentation coverage is a good Kwalitee indication (as they say),
not always an indication of good quality -- and certainly not a
consistent, reliable indication of that.
My opinion is that we ought to not mandate the use of Pod coverage
tests, simply because for our purposes it doesn't really matter what
their result is. If they're present, we should conditionalize the
tests (e.g. %_with_pod_tests magic or some such), but not insist on
them by default.
Either way, we ought to document this in Packaging/Perl -- which I
took a quick (and probably dirty) pass at reworking under
PackagingDrafts/Perl.
-Chris
--
Chris Weyl
Ex astris, scientia