Review Request 117393: Make building tests optional

Wed Apr 9 11:38:06 UTC 2014


> On April 7, 2014, 4:03 p.m., Martin Gräßlin wrote:
> > I still do not understand the rational behind the change. Could you please explain why we would want this build option?
> 
> Michael Palimaka wrote:
>     It's just nice to have, useful for some people, not useful for others. It's not a new option, it's been provided by ECM for over a year and of course KDE4_BUILD_TESTS was floating around before that.
> 
> Martin Gräßlin wrote:
>     right, but it was a deliberate decision to not honor KDE4_BUILD_TESTS in kde-workspace/kwin. So I'm just wondering what's the usecase or better put the advantage for kwin development to have a build option to disable testing. Personally I don't see any. If your a developer you to run the tests, thus it should be enabled. If you are a distro you want to run the tests as part of your package building process. So who would benefit from such a build option?
> 
> Michael Palimaka wrote:
>     Can we at least move QtTest dependency to tests directories?
> 
> Johannes Huber wrote:
>     As a source distro the tests run uncoditionally (on end user boxes). So there is a benefit and please follow the KF5 standardized way of doing things. Thanks in advance.
> 
> Martin Gräßlin wrote:
>     > Can we at least move QtTest dependency to tests directories?
>     
>     To which one? There are multiple autotests subdirectories. Also the XCB::ICCCM dependency is not in the tests but in the root CMakeLists.txt and I like it that way because all XCB dependencies are defined at one place.
>     
>     > So there is a benefit
>     
>     The benefit has to be weight against the costs. I see an additional cost on maintenance because we have to remember to add the build dependency whenever a new subdirectory gets tests or autotests. I see here a high breakage risk which I do not want to bear (been there with broken build options - remember OpenGL build option?). If this is really just a build option to suit the needs of one distribution I think the general rule of no distro-specific patches has to apply.
>     
>     > please follow the KF5 standardized way of doing things
>     
>     This is not a KF5 library, thus any rules for KF5 do not apply to KWin. You might notice that we also don't have a src/ subdirectory.
> 
> Michael Palimaka wrote:
>     Well the zero maintenance option is to leave everything where it is making the test-specific stuff conditional on BUILD_TESTING. I am really having trouble understanding why doing this is so offensive, given that it has zero impact on people that don't use it and having such an option is a fairly common thing.
> 
> Thomas Lübking wrote:
>     Martin wrote:
>     > what's the usecase or better put the advantage for kwin development to have a build option to disable testing.
>     
>     I'd say it's a gentoo specific thing, since users build kwin, but can not make use of tests etc. since they're users of the distro - not its maintainers nor (in any case) developers or interested in kwin development.
>     Building/running the tests will only slow down their update process.
>     
>     And, surprise: Michael & Johannes both have gentoo mail addresses ;-P
> 
> Michael Palimaka wrote:
>     Of course we would find it useful, but it really is a bit of a stretch to call such an option Gentoo-specific.
> 
> Thomas Lübking wrote:
>     Well, I see the usecase for source based distros - got another?
>     
>     If not, the bottom line of http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Source-based is "makes sense for gentoo" - that's not meant as disqualification, but to point the reason (it's also of use for gobolinux users, but what exactly is a "gobolinux" then?)
> 
> Martin Gräßlin wrote:
>     The point is that this is a build option which doesn't make sense during development. For development the tests need to be built, the same in the CI system. Thus it's a build option nobody working on KWin will use. This bears a high risk of breakage. We have been there with the optional OpenGL dependency, which was basically always broken because nobody used it.
>     
>     I try to learn from the mistakes from the past. Having a build option which nobody uses, sounds like a very bad idea to me. My aim as the maintainer is to do decisions which are best for the development of KWin. It's certainly not to please every stake holder.
> 
> Johannes Huber wrote:
>     Dear Martin, 
>     
>     as you already noticed that the test are only usefull for developers, CI systems and users interested in tests. 
>     
>     The proposed changes from Michael:
>     
>     
>     1. Will NOT disrupt your workflow:
>     
>     https://projects.kde.org/projects/kdesupport/extra-cmake-modules/repository/revisions/master/entry/kde-modules/KDECMakeSettings.cmake
>     
>     # TEST
>     #
>     #   Testing is enabled by default, and an option (BUILD_TESTING) is
>     #   provided for users to control this. See the CTest module
>     #   documentation in the CMake manual for more details.
>     #
>     #   This section can be disabled by setting
>     #     KDE_SKIP_TEST_SETTINGS
>     #   to TRUE before including this module.
>     
>     2. Will HELP all source based distro not to pull in unconditionally a new dependency (qttest)
>     
>     3. Will HELP to not execute tests unconditionally
>     
>     4. Upstreaming is the way to go as you already written down in blog post
>     http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/how-code-flows-about-upstream-and-downstream/
>     
>     So makes upstream buildsystem patching in downstream sense in this case?
>     
>     Greetings,
>     Johannes
> 
> Thomas Lübking wrote:
>     > 1. Will NOT disrupt your workflow:
>     
>     You're missing his point.
>     
>     Martins concern is that realistically no developer will use this key.
>     We therefore might easily introduce changes that break building w/o BUILD_TESTING and those would be released unnoticed, ie. the key would not be maintained, thus virtually not exist.
> 
> Johannes Huber wrote:
>     # Testing is enabled by default
>     
>     > option(BUILD_TESTING "Build the testing tree." ON)
>     
>     Just for the record it is enabled by default. (Even when it is not set)

"no developer will use this key" was meant to be read as "we'll *not* turn off testing"


- Thomas


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https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/117393/#review55183
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On April 7, 2014, 2:50 p.m., Michael Palimaka wrote:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/117393/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (Updated April 7, 2014, 2:50 p.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for kwin and Plasma.
> 
> 
> Repository: kwin
> 
> 
> Description
> -------
> 
> Add option to disable building tests, and move the QtTest dependency to be required only for tests.
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   CMakeLists.txt 35fb9ac3b0f8506e6f0fd92b48ba60e83524f212 
>   autotests/CMakeLists.txt 475a7a5f9013ed16d37777bc05e9cba2ad033338 
>   kcmkwin/kwincompositing/CMakeLists.txt 8eb170bedd32f04f5d2cc0fbd3079758e6138cc6 
>   kcmkwin/kwincompositing/test/CMakeLists.txt PRE-CREATION 
>   libkwineffects/CMakeLists.txt 0544b0d441f3685240160f15e6c9890c8a92fec1 
>   libkwineffects/autotests/CMakeLists.txt 8973545cc21b010f1430cf7df20a29da5b14ab43 
>   tabbox/CMakeLists.txt 76ba3a2499ca142bb82109db9d7239001ed7157e 
>   tabbox/autotests/CMakeLists.txt 4e83fa7524483d64ea149f0eb1818ea9f61cffe0 
> 
> Diff: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/117393/diff/
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> Builds. Tests pass (when enabled).
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Michael Palimaka
> 
>

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