[rb-general] Finding Packages With Tests

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Eli Schwartz <eschwartz at archlinux.org> writes:

> On a related note, methods of defining a package that contains (and
> should run) tests in other build/packaging systems:
>
> - Arch Linux PKGBUILDs define a bash function called "check"
> - RPM spec files define the "%check" directive
> - Gentoo ebuilds define a bash function called "src_test"
> - Guix does something very complicated in scheme, which seems to create
>   buildsystem templates that know whether a package already contains a
>   testsuite, possibly by e.g. checking packages that use Make to see if
>   a check target is defined.

Guix has (not so complicated) build system abstractions.  An example is
the “gnu-build-system” which specifies that tests are run by default
with “make check”.

Guix doesn’t know if a package contains tests.  If a package happens not
to come with a test suite and thus doesn’t offer a check target we
disable the tests.  A package may also contain tests but not offer a
check target; in that case we may also disable the tests.

--
Ricardo