Subject: Re: bug#73808: 30.0.91; Should test files be included in GNU ELPA tarballs?

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2024 21:29:59 +0000

Lin Jian via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text
editors" <[email-masked]> writes:

> Some GNU ELPA packages include test files in their tarballs, such as
> triples[1].  Test files may have extra dependencies.  For example,
> triples-test.el[2] requires kv.  When installing package tarballs, those
> extra dependencies cause compilation errors, which causes package build
> failures in our NixOS CI.
>
> Given that users probably do not need those test files, I think it is a
> good idea to exclude them from tarballs.  MELPA does that by default[3].
>
> WDYT?

The best way to exclude the test files is to add a .elpaignore file to
the upstream project.  We can also do that on our end, but that makes it
less flexible for the package maintainer.

>
> [1]: https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/triples.html
> [2]: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/elpa.git/tree/triples-test.el?h=externals/triples&id=cf7f9c8dd77e47a1c32e0d0026df86a0eac4e2a5#n30
> [3]: https://github.com/melpa/melpa?tab=readme-ov-file#recipe-format