Hi everyone, I spent some time with Lintian's test suite and would like to propose a few changes:
1. Rename the suite 'tests' to 'uploads' (which is what is being tested). 2. Rename the suite 'scripts' to 'code' (which is what is being tested). 3. Require an explicit 'Suite:' statement in each test description. My overall goal is to curate the test set more aggressively. Tests will be associated more closely with checks by: A. Allowing tests to be arranged in folders other than t/$suite/$testname. (For many tests, that could be t/$check/$testname.) B. As an option, disregarding tags emitted by unrelated checks. (Patch set complete but not submitted.) C. Manually sorting tests by identifying the check they are exercising (or splitting them when appropriate) and enabling the new option described under B. This plan will bring unit testing to Lintian checks. It will also make it easier to write and maintain tests: There will be no more nuisance tags from unrelated checks. When writing new checks you will no longer have to add some of the new tags to existing tests. Converted tests will more or less automatically fulfill the README's plea that "Test cases should be as Lintian-clean as possible except for the tags that they're testing." Perhaps best of all, the fields Test-For: and Test-Against: will be obsolete. They will be inferred automatically from the checks being tested. I will submit merge requests in the next few weeks. This email is only about enabling step A. Please let me know if you have any thoughts. Tx! Kind regards, Felix Lechner
