Re: make test does not perform self-tests?

[Thomas Dickey]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 12:33:06PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I noticed 'make test' does not perform testing of Ncurses. Instead,
> testing is performed during 'make install'.

Actually there's a "check" rule which I've used this year for
things that can be run in batch mode (in the include-directory).

There's also (for quite a while) a linkage-test in the ncurses directory,
which gets checked when I do builds.  (Some builds produce multiple log
files; at the moment I've 145 logfiles in the active set for ncurses).

Besides that, I use a external script for checking the pc-files versus
the ncurses*-config script.

Most of the test-programs that you may have in mind can't be run that way.

(I'm well aware of other testing methodologies, and look forward to reports
by people who've found the time to do the work for this in ncurses).
 
> That's very unusual. According to GNU's coding standards, self-tests
> are to be run during 'make check'. Also see
> https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Standard-Targets.html.

sure - it says

        Perform self-tests (if any).

> Typically the workflow is:
> 
> * configure
> * make
> * make check (or make test)
> * make install if check is OK
> 
> Deferring 'make check' to the install step means we can install a
> broken package. And in the case of Termcap and Ncurses, I seem to
> recall the install is destructive on existing files. There is no way
> to properly remove the package once installed.

I build packages (or equivalently, use one of the BSD-style ports)
for testing what I'm working on, with a few dozen platforms.
As a rule, I don't overwrite any ncurses- or terminfo files
created by other's packages.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net
ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net

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