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

["Germán A. Racca"]

On 04/30/2012 11:48 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> 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.

Well, here I'm facing the problem that, for running the tests in %check 
section (after %build), all the required packages for runtime are also 
needed as BR.

Should I continue to run tests in %check and add the corresponding BRs? 
In this case it'd be:

BuildRequires:  python-devel numpy python-matplotlib pyfits pywcs
Requires:       numpy python-matplotlib pyfits pywcs

Or should I stop because of this additional BRs?

Germán.

> 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
>
>
>
>


-- 
Germán A. Racca
Fedora Package Maintainer
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Skytux