[Libreoffice] Disabling unit tests building?

[Norbert Thiebaud]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 6:10 PM, Jan Holesovsky <kendy at suse.cz> wrote:
> Hi Bjoern,
>
> On 2011-03-21 at 18:34 +0100, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
>
>> We clearly want to run unittest by default. It might make sense to
>> rename the current "all" target to "buildonly" and "allandcheck" to
>> "all" to be more explicit. The GNU make conventions are unclear if
>> checks should be run by the default target (However, they are clear on
>> that the default target should be "all" -- which we currently violate):
>>
>>  http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Standard-Targets
>>
>> Im open for opinions on this.
>
> I'd default to building without running checks when you issue make in
> the module (the developer running the make knows best whether the change
> is just adding a debug output, or does the "Real Thing"), and build with
> checks when you rebuild the entire LibreOffice - that way, even if you
> forget to do your 'make check', your changes are high that you spot the
> breakage, or (in the worst case) the tinderboxes uncover that.
>
> Wrt. the naming, I'd do 'all' build only, and 'check' depending on
> 'all', ie. the 'allandcheck' meaning.

I think the issue here is that if you make the top level default
target (all) mean 'build-only' you decrease the odd of the tests being
covered.

I agree with you with the module level build, but I thing that the top
level make should to the test by default unless actively told
otherwise.
My rational is the same than the one by which I think that bin-filter
should be enabled by default: we want as much coverage as possible.
Casual dev that compile once in a while, without having learned all
the intricacy of the build system, should by default be doing the
'safe' thing
and from a dev point of view that is 'compile and test as much as
possible to detect if you broke something'
We have seen case when someone did some change that impacted
binfilter, did make and though everything was fine... because by
default binfilter was not built and he was not aware of it.

iow, if one wants to take shortcuts, one should have to learn how-to,
and hopefully gain awareness of the consequences along the way :-)

Norbert