"make test" as an alternative to "make check" (was: Re: GNU tar 1.19 on HP-UX)

[Bruno Haible]

[Adding automake mailing list, removing tar and gnulib lists from CC].

H.Merijn Brand wrote:
> > Please convince the GNU world to add 'make test' as alias for
> > 'make check'.

Eric Blake answered:
> It won't work for coreutils, where test is the name of a built program.
> That's why the GNU Coding Standards mandate 'make check', but mention
> nothing about 'make test'.  However, patches to automake are welcome.

Before accepting such patches: Is such an alias useful at all?

1) What would be the long-term effects of such an alias?
Aliases for things that are meant to be equal usually lead to
inconsistencies. First, some tutorials will start to recommend "make test",
not "make check". Then, later, packages will appear that support only
"make test" and not "make check". So, in the end, less packages will follow
the GNU standards, and life for developers will be harder.

2) Let's see how well-known "make test" is: Googling for

  +"make check"                   -> 1810000 hits
  +"make check" -gnu -linux       -> 1610000 hits
  +"make check" -gnu -linux -perl -> 1600000 hits

  +"make test"                    -> 1610000 hits
  +"make test" -perl              ->  439000 hits
  +"make test" -perl -gnu -linux  ->  309000 hits

So this means, "make test" is mostly known to perl users, whereas outside
the perl users community, "make check" is 4 times more well-known than
"make test".

Bruno