Subject: bug#11745: the new test-suite summary is confusing

From: Karl Berry <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 19:44:23 -0600

Hi Alexandre and all - regarding
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=11745 (12 years ago, oh well).

    I upgraded to Automake 1.12.1 to discover the each of these test-suite
    [directories] now displays a huge summary like:
    ============================================================================
    Testsuite summary for spot 0.9.1a
    ...
    The above in definitely *not* a testsuite summary for
    the project, it's only a test summary for one directory.

Agreed, but:

    I think the easiest fix would be to change the header to just
    "Testsuite summary", without mentioning the package.

I don't think that's the right fix. In TeX Live, we have many different
packages, all in one Automake tree, and if every testsuite summary just
said "TeX Live", it would be difficult to discern what the summary was
reporting on. That is, the TL make check output starts like this:
Testsuite summary for Kpathsea 6.3.3/dev
..
Testsuite summary for zlib (TeX Live) 1.2.11
..
Testsuite summary for lua53 (TeX Live) 5.3.5

If all of those just said "TeX Live", it wouldn't be good.

I don't think we should change the default form of the Automake header
line at this late date, since some packages (and plenty of AM's own
tests) might well be expecting what's currently output.

So I propose to define a new variable in lib/am/check.am:
AM_TESTSUITE_SUMMARY_HEADER = " for $(PACKAGE_STRING)"
so the default is unchanged.

I made a simple test (t/testsuite-summary-header.sh) that checks various
settings of the new variable behave as expected, in particular, setting
it to the empty string for your case.

Proposed patch attached. make check and make distcheck still pass.
Jim, anyone, any comments? --thanks, karl.