[Catalyst] Is it normal to have lots of trouble installing catalyst?

Brandon Black blblack at gmail.com
Wed Feb 8 21:39:50 CET 2006


On 2/8/06, Perrin Harkins <perrin at elem.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 14:16 -0600, Brandon Black wrote:
> > The problem there is that sometimes no effective test can be done
> > without external dependecies.
>
> The common solution if doe tests to skip with a message about what to
> install if you want to run them.
>
> > You can see a microcosm of this with
> > the DBIx::Class tests.  In order for DBIx::Class to do any sort of
> > useful testing, it obviously needs at least one supported database
> > server and DBI / DBD::xxx installed.
>
> Those tets should attempt to load SQLite and skip if it's not installed.
> People who want to run the tests on their machine can install SQLite.
>

But if there are no effective tests without it, then removing it from
the dependencies and making it an optional/skippable test means that
the majority of users installing it will not do any effective testing.
 Pretty much nobody chooses to go out of their way to get a test to
run, at least not among normal users.  Whatever tests don't run
automatically just don't get run for most installations.

Thus the rate of testers:users drops dramatically, and you don't find
the bugs as quickly.  Making the bulk of your tests skip completely
because of a missing external package is about the same as just not
doing a "make test" before "make install" to begin with in these
cases, or always doing forced installs.

-- Brandon



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