Hi folks,

I've got my package, siconos, working nicely now on the platform I use it
on (amd64) but some inspection of the build logs has revealed that buildd
fails on all other platforms.

https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=siconos&suite=sid&comaint=yes

In fact it does build fine, but the software includes some numerical tests
that compare results of the various solvers against expected results.
These apparently yield slightly different values on other platforms, and
the tests fail.

To get the software running on other architectures, would it be better to,

1. eliminate such tests.
2. change the numerical threshold for failing a test.
3. have different thresholds or even reference files per platform.

In some sense (1) or (2) could be acceptable since it seems overly brittle
to depend on specific numerical outcomes -- the intent of these tests is
really for the developers to detect any unexpected changes in the solver
outputs, they are not meant to gate deployment of the software.

So perhaps it would be better for tests for buildd to focus mostly on
whether the software runs without crashing, rather than comparing specific
and very precise numerical outputs.  In fact if I simply remove the
reference files from the software, the tests will still run and pass
without comparing the numerical output, but I am not sure if this is wise.

regards,
Steve

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