Hi Simon,
On Wed, Sep 04, 2019 at 11:09:27AM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> Name: noinsttests
> Changes content of binary packages: No ("C: N" on the wiki)
> Changes set of binary packages: Yes ("S: Y" on the wiki)
> Description:
> Binary packages consisting entirely of automated tests, manual tests,
> example/demo programs and test tools should not be generated.
This makes very much sense to me, yes.
> I think this should be allowed, and should not prevent use of the
> noinsttests profile. We shouldn't fill up the Packages file and the NEW
> queue with separate installed-tests, manual tests and examples binary
> packages for no good reason, and if you want to install one of those
> categories, it seems to me that being forced to install the others is
> not onerous.
This appears to contradict your classification of "cannot change content
of binary packages". I strongly prefer working with "safe" profiles, but
I also see the need for the use you describe.
Trying to bind the "safety" property to the profile name has not worked
well in the past. Earlier, I proposed recording the "safety" of profiles
as some extra feature in the source package metadata. No conclusion has
ensued on this thus far. This is kinda derailing the topic though.
> The "noinsttests" name is inspired by previous discussion (on a bug
> asking for more <!nocheck> in some package, if I remember correctly?),
> and by ginsttest-runner in the gnome-desktop-testing package[1], which
> is a test-runner for GNOME's installed-tests initiative.
Would it make sense to mirror the "check" part of "nocheck" and use
"noinstchecks" instead? On the other hand, if I were to choose the name
of "nocheck" today, I'd probably call it "notest".
> If people strongly prefer build profiles to be singular, then "noinsttest"
> would also be fine.
I think it's less about singular, but more about consistency with other
profiles such as "nocheck" which happens to not be called "nochecks".
"nodoc" vs "nodocs" likewise.
> The conventional names for the build-time options that enable/disable
> GNOME installed-tests are --{en,dis}able-installed-tests (Autotools) and
> -Dinstalled_tests={true,false} (Meson), but I think "no-installed-tests"
> or "no-as-installed-tests", or a version of one of those names with
> words run together, would be inconveniently long for a build-profile.
Irrespective of the convenience feature, this term is going to end up
many times in our package metadata and may negatively affect the
performance (and memory consumption) of analysis tools. For this reason,
I prefer a short name like the one you proposed.
In any case, "noinsttests" made it immediately obvious to me what you
meant. In the end, the name is probably less important than having the
profile documented and used.
Helmut
