On Tue, 16 Feb 2016, Ole Streicher wrote: > >> > yes -- autopkgtest CI is great but doesn't cut it for mass backporting > >> > since we don't even want to upload any package backport to distro X if > >> > we know that it is going to fail there. Thus package build time > >> > testing is necessary. and then it would indeed be great to setup a CI > >> > using autopkgtest for all the backports to guarantee that they continue > >> > working as additional backports enter the stage.
> >> +1 > > yeap ;) > While this is in principle correct, it misses a bit my point: Sure, > build time tests are essential for backports. However, if you backport > package A which is a dependency of B, then the build time test of A will > not test the function of B with the backported A. There is always the > danger that backported packages break installed ones. That's why I would > opt for CI tests wherever possible -- usually the build time tests are > easily rewritten to run on the installed package as well. And for Python > (which today is a large part of analysis packages), this is really > trivial. by no means I am arguing against "CI tests" of any kind, but, again, post-upload testing only provides indication of newly introduced problems, and doesn't prevent them (as build-time/pre-upload testing). As for testing dependent packages, whenever I am upload some non-leaf, likely to break reverse dependences, package I use ad-hoc and ugly https://github.com/neurodebian/neurodebian/blob/master/tools/nd_build_testrdepends as I have just done for cython to see that the new version caused only 1 new FTBFS (bug report filed ;)). I remember that there was a better alternative to my hackish ugly script.... may be it was this one: Package: ratt Version: 0.0~git20150816.0.b060319-1 Installed-Size: 2931 Maintainer: Debian Go Packaging Team <[email protected]> Architecture: amd64 Description-en: Rebuild All The Things! ratt (“Rebuild All The Things!”) operates on a Debian .changes file of a just-built package, identifies all reverse-build-dependencies and rebuilds them with the .debs from the .changes file. . The intended use-case is, for example, to package a new snapshot of a Go library and verify that the new version does not break any other Go libraries/binaries. Homepage: https://github.com/debian/ratt Hope this of some value, Cheers, -- Yaroslav O. Halchenko Center for Open Neuroscience http://centerforopenneuroscience.org Dartmouth College, 419 Moore Hall, Hinman Box 6207, Hanover, NH 03755 Phone: +1 (603) 646-9834 Fax: +1 (603) 646-1419 WWW: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik
