[Libreoffice] Brittle unit test dependencies

[Stephan Bergmann]

<http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=9351f4c1d6a3567c3b013894a0cc08471b4b0156> 
"Tests apparently depend on localedata_en library." is yet another 
non-obvious dependency the "large" unit tests in sc, sw etc. have on 
their environment.  I fear that the approach of having such "large" unit 
tests with fat dependencies, who's dependencies in turn have additional 
hidden runtime dependencies is not really maintainable.  How should 
those manually tracked dependencies be kept accurate?  Compare this with 
the original idea of subsequent tests, making those tests depend on a 
complete installation and running them within the environment of that 
installation.

My opinion is that we have to accept the fact that those "large" unit 
tests are in fact subsequent tests (to be run in the environment of a 
complete installation), and that "true" unit tests (executed during the 
build, not at the end when the installation set is available) need to 
have much smaller and cleaner dependencies to be useful and maintainable.

Stephan