Subject: [bug#58365] [PATCH 0/6] Support #:tests? in guile-build-system

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 14:36:48 +0200

Hello,

Maxime Devos <[email-masked]> skribis:

> A copy is made of test-driver.scm to avoid potentially surprising rebuilds
> when changes are made.
>
> * gnu/packages/guile.scm (guile-test-driver): New variable.
> * gnu/packages/aux-files/test-driver.scm: New file.
> * Makefile.am (AUX_FILES): Register it.
> * build-aux/test-driver.scm: Add a note.

I very much like the idea of supporting #:tests? in
‘guile-build-system’, but I’m skeptical about this approach.

The reason I’m skeptical is because ‘test-driver.scm’ is written as an
Automake test driver (it follows the “protocol” defined by Automake) for
tests that use SRFI-64—that’s a specific kind of tool, and one approach
to writing test suites in Guile.

I guess all I’m saying is that I doubt this is widely applicable, which
the diff seems to confirm:

>  4 files changed, 326 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

Perhaps at this stage there really isn’t much we can factorize, after
all.  It would be nice to fix this, but that’s probably work to be done
upstream—for example, by adding a “guild test” command.  We can even
beta-test such a command as an external project before including it in
Guile proper.

WDYT?

Thanks,
Ludo’.