Subject: [bug#53434] Patches to unbreak many i686 packages

From: Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2022 17:49:37 +0100

On Sat, 22 Jan 2022 13:38:18 +0100
Maxime Devos <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli schreef op za 22-01-2022 om 03:54 [+0100]:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > This is a patch serie to unbreak many i686 packages.
> > [...]
> 
> I noticed that for quite a few packages, tests are disabled.
> That might allow builds to ‘succeed’, but presumably these test
> failures indicate real problems (otherwise, why have a test suite?),
> so this only ignores potential brokenness without addressing it.
> 
> Before ignoring tests, it would be necessary to investigate the cause
> of the test failures.
As I see it, we have a bit of chicken and egg issue here: If the
test fails, we have no substitutes, and because of that, fixing packages
where test fails become extremely time consuming, and so way less
likely to happen. 

And even if that work to fix tests is not done, if tests are disabled
we end up with a somewhat working i686 system, whereas if tests are not
disabled we end up with a more and more broken i686 probably with less
and less people willing to fix it.

So my idea here was to first get the tests disabled and then to fix the
root causes. And that can takes some time to do too, as not only we
need to understand why they are failing and fix them, but also need to
upstream the patches and backport them in Guix or update the packages to
the new versions where this is fixed.

Denis.