Re: nocheck (don't run) vs nodoc (don't build)
Christian Kastner <ckk@debian.org> writes:
> Policy 4.9.1 states that (emphases mine):
> * "[nocheck] says not to *run* any build-time test suite"
> * "[nodoc] says to skip any *build* steps"
> My reading with regards to 'nocheck' was that where tests were available
> and needed to be built, then they should always be built, just not run.
> A typical example might be a C library package that builds those tests
> and ships them as autopkgtests, maybe even in a dedicated package.
> I thought this line of reasoning was sound, but then I remembered the
> 'nodoc' tag and now I am no longer sure. Maybe I'm taking the 'nocheck'
> description too literally.
I think this may be semi-accidental stemming from the affect on build
dependencies. One of the points of nodoc is to avoid needing to install
(and thus have available) all the build dependencies that are used only
for building the documentation, which often involves a full TeXLive
installation and thus poses time, space, and bootstrapping issues. So I
think we made specific note that the documentation wouldn't be built so
that those build dependencies wouldn't be required.
The same argument probably applies to the test suite, I think? It's just
less common (although certainly not unheard of) for test suites to have
test-suite-only build dependencies (as opposed to test-only runtime
dependencies, which are very common in at least the Perl world).
Anyway, I think this warrants a bug and some work on figuring out what we
really want to say, and I'd want the folks working on bootstrapping and
build profiles to weigh in. The nocheck build profile sort of implies
that the test suite shouldn't be built either:
No test suite should be run, and build dependencies used only for that
purpose should be ignored. Builds that set this profile must also add
nocheck to DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS
It still doesn't say this explicitly, but it says build dependencies
should be ignored, so presumably the build would fail if it required any
build dependcies, implying that it shouldn't be run.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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