Re: [Libcdio-devel] Test suite

[Leon Merten Lohse]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2016 07:23:27 -0400
Rocky Bernstein <address@hidden> wrote:

> The tests in the parent directory, are more end-to-end kinds of tests
> and they may use top-level tools like cd-info. They are less fragile
> because they cover larger units of code. But they are slower and when
> there is a problem my not pinpoint the error as much.

Thanks for the clarification.

> > Now my biggest question. Why are all the test sources and scripts
> generated from .in templates? Don't we have `make' for source files?
> 
> Look for @..@ in the templates and you will see that those values are
> custom for things specific to you setup. A common thing that is
> customized for your setup is the full path of a data files that are
> needed to run a test. Or where uninstalled C include headers are
> located.

That is what I thought. But really the only variables that are
substituted are @abs_top_srcdir@ and @srcdir@, which could easily be
passed as -D flags in the makefile (template).
I also don't entirely see the necessity of this because make changes
into the directory anyway.

> > For the scripts its even worse because the generated files are not
> necessarily executable.
> 
> Not "worse" but "better" ;-)  the script is not executable because
> you are not supposed to execute it. Or modify it by hand. Instead
> values get substituted in there such before it can be executed.

If that is so, then I don't understand the lines 113-135 in
tests/Makefile.am and lines 757-736 in configure.ac.
But yes -- I agree that those do not need to be executable.

Some of those actually use other @address@hidden variables than @address@hidden
Instead of generating every script from a template one could rather
generate a single test_constants.sh (similar to config.h) with all the
constants used and include it where necessary.

By the way: $srcdir should get passed as an environment variable, so
there is no need for a template when only the path is needed.
And again, the scripts are being called from within the directory, so
it should be safe to assume that $srcdir='.'.

That said, I will try to include the new test directly without a
template. We will see how that goes. Automake is already giving me a
headache.

Best Regards
Leon