Package: autopkgtest
Version: 5.22
Severity: minor
Tags: patch
The documentation in README.package-tests.rst currently says:
Source package header
---------------------
To allow test execution environments to discover packages which provide
tests, their source packages need to have a ``Testsuite:`` header
containing ``autopkgtest`` (or a value like ``autopkgtest-pkg-perl``,
see below). Multiple values get comma separated, as usual in control
files. This tag is added automatically by dpkg-source version 1.17.11
or later, so normally you don't need to worry about this field.
It is not quite clear what "This tag is added automatically..." means,
as the previous sentences referred to both "autopkgtest" and
"autopkgtest-pkg-perl". Could I suggest the following alternative
wording? (It also removes reference to dpkg-source, as that change
was introduced about 8 years ago.)
Source package header
---------------------
To allow test execution environments to discover packages which provide
tests, their source packages can have a ``Testsuite:`` header
containing ``autopkgtest`` (or a value like ``autopkgtest-pkg-perl``,
see below). Multiple values are comma separated, as usual in control
files, and this results in multiple testsuites being run. If the
source package has a debian/tests/control file, then ``autopkgtest``
is automatically added to the list of testsuites; in most cases you
can therefore leave this header field out.
I would also add an extra sentence to the end of the following section
("Automatic test control file for known package types"), lengthening
the second paragraph to say:
Those packages do not have to provide ``debian/tests/``, but they should
still include an appropriate source package header
(``Testsuite: autopkgtest-pkg-perl`` or similar) so that they can be
discovered in the archive. (Note that adding ``Testsuite:
autopkgtest-pkg-perl`` to a package which has a
``debian/tests/control`` file will cause ``autodep8`` to be run in
addition to the tests defined in that file.)
Best wishes,
Julian
