Re: package and testing rant (was Re: package.el, auto-installation, and auto-removal)

[phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk (Phillip Lord)]

Nic Ferrier <nferrier@ferrier.me.uk> writes:

> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
>>> I am still cross about the whole state of packaging. It's wrong. But no
>>> one seems to be listening to me.
>>
>> I'm not sure if you're referring to the way GNU ELPA works or about
>> package.el.  About GNU ELPA, it's not that I don't listen, but that
>> I disagree.  The point of GNU ELPA to not to just distribute other
>> people's packages.
>
> The multi-packages users load in their emacs are tars. But the packages
> that are checked in to ELPA are directories of files.
>
> So package authors are not checking in what gets delivered to the
> user. So there is a magic build step somewhere.


It is certainly the case that I most "test" my packages by using them.
And I do not install my own packages through ELPA but live from their
VC'd repository. So, there is a worry here. This is even true during my
continuous integration tests (the dependencies are loaded from an ELPA
repo, but nothing else).

Having said that, I generally use an automatic tool to move from the
source repository format to the package format; or, in the case of
MELPA, someone else does it for me. Once this is set up, I am struggling
to think of bugs that have come at package time.


> This discourages testing of packages before they are distributed.
>
> And I am really starting to think we need better testing. 24.4 looked
> like a slog to release and it still has many bugs.
>
> And yes, I promise to help more. But that's not really the issue. This
> isn't scaling. We need to have better QA tools. And packages having
> hidden builds is going the other way.


Not going to argue here. Slowing moving my elisp to a testable state has
made me happier.

Phil