[rb-general] Finding Packages With Tests

[Chris Lamb]

Hi Omar,

> Is there some way to identify which packages which have built in tests?

Unfortunately there is no canonical or general way to identify
Debian packages that "run" a testuite.

Not only will many packages will always tests as part of their
build, there are a myriad of ways in which the various Debian
build systems will attempt locate and run tests.

Just as a concrete example, the "debian/rules" package for
countless packages is merely:

    #!/usr/bin/make -f

    %:
	    dh $@

.. which will automatically look for a Makefile (or similar) and
then magically work out whether there is a "tests" target, etc. etc.
There are parallel ones for Python, Go, CMake, etc. etc. Even if we
could list them all, I am sure we would be missing 50% of them.

Furthermore, some test failures are deliberately ignored for good
reasons so knowing that a package "had" a testsuite would not make
running those tests particularly meanintful.

What, in more detail, are you trying to achieve by identifying
packages with tests? I suspect there may be a better solution.


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby at debian.org 🍥 chris-lamb.co.uk
       `-