On 17 September 2004 12:47 David Coppit wrote: > Can someone please tell me how to convince cpan-tester's > automated testing > to: > > - Not test unless required modules are installed. (Of *course* it > fails if you don't have a required module installed.)
This is a current know problem with CPANPLUS [1]. Jos, Autrijus and others are working on it at the moment. [1] http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bug.html?id=6022 > - Send me the output of "make test TEST_VERBOSE=1" instead of > the useless > general testing report. (Test X failed, but you'll have to > guess why!) Patches (as always) are welcome. Changing the way that CPANPLUS works when it finds a failure is not easy. For it to rerun all the tests may be overkill for some distributions as the result of the failure may not be a failed test. > Also, do module authors have access to the test machines? > It's hard to fix > a bug if you can't reproduce it. No, They are mostly personal machines. You are more than welcome to request further info though, as most testers respond as helpfully as they can. > Maybe I'll have Makefile.PL actually show them the README file and make > them confirm that they read it. ;) This would be a bad idea. Automated testing doesn't read README files, they just return to any question asked, thus accepting the default. You may be getting fed up with these reports, but please bear in mind that they are firmly aimed at making CPAN a reliable repository of code. Without any sort of testing on the code that gets uploaded everyday, how confident would you be that the distributions you download and use actually work? There are currently over 300 testers, although probably only about 60 regular testers, and they're efforts in testing modules is completely voluntary. Thankfully most authors are very pleased that testers, using a multitude of different setups, can test their distributions for them. > Overall, I'm just frustrated. I really do work hard on getting good > releases, and I give very detailed instructions on (1) installing > prerequisites, and (2) giving me enough info to debug test failures. > But these folks seem to think that if it doesn't install automatically, it > must be a module bug. Overall, I think anyone who doesn't package their distributions in such a way as to install cleanly (automated or manually) is going to be very frustrated. The prerequisites is a known problem. If you want debug info report, perhaps you should be looking at some of the other Test modules (as others have mentioned), or contact (pleasantly) the tester in question and ask for further information. We may be sending automated reports, but there are real humans on the other end too. If you want to help out and fix some of the problems you're encountering with the install mechanisms, by all means get involved. Barbie -- Barbie (@missbarbell.co.uk) | Birmingham Perl Mongers user group | http://birmingham.pm.org/ --------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through http://www.easynetdial.co.uk
