Some packages, like dbus[1], have testing features that, while useful for developers and arch-testers, aren't something that should be foisted on users. Dbus' case is extreme, as it builds-in functions that are useful for unit testing, but result in an insecure and unstable package (I just "fixed" a bunch of testsuite failures i've been seeing in dbus-using packages by disabling USE=test). Other packages have testsuites that take an unreasonable amount of time to build/run (db, ppl, boost, that faad/faac one that takes six hours), are pretty much guaranteed to fail (gcc, binutils), have strange dependency quirks (can't run the tests unless the package is already installed, create circular dependencies), or a dozen other situations I can't think of right now.
I'd like to propose a new USE flag, qa-test or a better name, to handle these cases in a consistent way. This would give us a way to differentiate between tests that everyone should run and tests that only devs and arch-testers would be interested in, making enabling FEATURES=test by default in a future EAPI a little more palatable. Use of this flag would be up to the maintainer, of course. [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/287722 -- fonts, Character is what you are in the dark. gcc-porting, wxwidgets @ gentoo EFFD 380E 047A 4B51 D2BD C64F 8AA8 8346 F9A4 0662
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