Mechanism to skip self-tests (spkg-check) for certain packages

[jhpalmieri]

With the attached patch, if you set SAGE_CHECK=yes and SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES='!python,!cvxopt' and then build Sage, it will run self-tests for all packages except python and cvxopt. By default, SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES=!python.

This sort of behavior can be useful with the current situation, in which python always fails self-tests (as far as I know), and a package like cvxopt fails them on OS X Lion. So when I'm testing Sage with Lion, I could use '!python,!cvxopt' and easily run self-tests on all of the other packages. This should be viewed as merely a convenience — I hope that people straighten out Python's test suite in general and cvxopt on Lion — but it might be a useful option.

Apply

• attachment: trac_12579-sage-check.v3.patch to the root repo.
• attachment: trac_12579-doc.v3.patch to the Sage library

Depends on #4949
Depends on #12479

Component: build

Author: John Palmieri

Reviewer: Jeroen Demeyer

Merged: sage-5.0.beta7

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/12579

[jhpalmieri]

root repo

[jhpalmieri]

Attachment: trac_12579-sage-check.patch.gz

Sage library

[jhpalmieri]

comment:1

Attachment: trac_12579-doc.patch.gz

[jhpalmieri]

Description changed:

--- 
+++ 
@@ -1 +1,6 @@
 With the attached patch, if you set `SAGE_CHECK='!python!cvxopt'` and then build Sage, it will run self-tests for all packages except python and cvxopt. This sort of behavior can be useful with the current situation, in which python always fails self-tests (as far as I know), and a package like cvxopt fails them on OS X Lion.  So when I'm testing Sage with Lion, I could use `'!python!cvxopt'` and easily run self-tests on all of the other packages. This should be viewed as merely a convenience — I hope that people straighten out Python's test suite in general and cvxopt on Lion — but it might be a useful option.
+
+Apply
+
+- [attachment: trac_12579-sage-check.patch](https://github.com/sagemath/sage-prod/files/10654974/trac_12579-sage-check.patch.gz) to the root repo.
+- [attachment: trac_12579-doc.patch](https://github.com/sagemath/sage-prod/files/10654975/trac_12579-doc.patch.gz) to the Sage library

[jdemeyer]

comment:2

I'm not sure that I like the interface. Personally, I would prefer two variables: one simply to determine whether or not to run tests (SAGE_CHECK) and another to actually determine which tests to run (which by default should be set to !python).

[jdemeyer]

comment:3

As for implementation: the second variable (call it SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES or something) should change the environment variable SAGE_CHECK accordingly, before running spkg-install. The new GCC spkg uses SAGE_CHECK in its spkg-install and it makes sense to allow that.

Example:

SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES="!python,mpir,mpfr"

would always check mpir and mpfr, regardless of SAGE_CHECK but would never check python, regardless of SAGE_CHECK.

The default should be

SAGE_CHECK_PACKAGES="!python"

[jhpalmieri]

comment:4

My feeling was, why introduce a new environment variable when we can just use SAGE_CHECK? The whole approach might be better if we used autoconf:

./configure --self-tests=yes --skip-tests=python,cvxopt ...

or something like that. But I'll think about adding a second variable.