Re: About the Makefile target "check"

[Przemysław Wojnowski]

W dniu 01.11.2015 o 13:01, John Darrington pisze:
> I think that *if* there is going to be a change to the standards, then it should
>   be that both "check" and "test" should be targets, one being an alias of the 
> other.
> Make check has been used for over thirty years in makefiles, whereas I can only
> think of one significant project where this is called "test".  It would 
> certainly
> set a cat among the pigeons if we were to start removing the "check" target.
Being old doesn't mean it is good - for the reason I've written. But I do agree
that removing it would be too radical. Creating a "test" alias would be good
enough and effectively would marginalize "check" over time.

> The only argument that has been presented so far in this discussion, amounts to
> "because me and my friends are used to it that way".
"test" is known, from various tools and languages, by most programmers in the
world, so it seems that your statement refers to usage of "check". And I also
agree that it is minority, that's why I suggested to reconsider "test".

> I honestly think this is a
> trivial issue and the GNU standards should not change just because a group of
> people like it better (especially when the argument revolves around a single 
> word).
The world is build from trivial things, which pile up to build something
bigger. Here it's no different - less intuitive task for running tests, other
10 things also not so good, but too trivial to fix and sums up to being useless.

Standard is not mutually exclusive with evolution. Good standards should adapt
to the changing world. "check" might have been good 30 years ago, because there
were no other tools, but now the situation is totally different and only "a
group of people" use "check". I've listed jut a few tools, but they are used by
_most_ programmers in the world.

> I *do* think that what other systems do is orthogonal to the question of what
> GNU standards should require.
Why do you think so? Don't you think that reuse of knowledge is important? It's
fundamental ingredient of productivity.

Kindest Regards,
Przemysław