Why not generalise that:

check-alias "test" which defaults to check.  Or something similar.

J'

On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 10:46:19AM +0000, ng0 wrote:
     Can we ease it up in a different way for applications which do not have
     aliases?
     Maybe using something like
     #:check-is-tests? #t in the arguments, which fails when check and test
     exist?
     
     John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au> writes:
     
     > [ Unknown signature status ]
     > "make check" is what the Gnu Coding Standards specify:
     > http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Standard-Targets
     >
     > So I think it should stay as it is - at least for the gnu-build-system
     >
     > J'
     >
     > On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 12:05:47PM +0300, Efraim Flashner wrote:
     >      On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 04:14:25PM +0000, ng0 wrote:
     >      > 
     >      > 2016-08-26 15:16 <ng0> recently when I pointed out to someone and they
     >      > added a make check which just calls the original make test, I was
     >      > wondering if our gnu build system should try for make test and make
     >      > check.. this seems to be very common test instead of check
     >      > 2016-08-26 15:19 <kyamashita> ng0: Or maybe try one if the other fails?
     >      > 2016-08-26 15:19 <ng0> yes.. very often I had to replace check with just
     >      > test
     >      > 2016-08-26 15:21 <kyamashita> It might be worth bringing up on the
     >      > guix-devel mailing list to see what others think.
     >      > 2016-08-26 15:21 <ng0> yes.. I will do so later
     >      > 
     >      > What do others think? How can we extend gnu-build-system so that make
     >      > test can be used but make check is not ignored?
     >      > -- 
     >      > ng0
     >      > For non-prism friendly talk find me on http://www.psyced.org
     >      > 
     >      
     >      I was curious how many times we use test-target:
     >      
     >      $ grep test-target gnu/packages/*scm | wc -l
     >      87
     >      $ grep test-target gnu/packages/*scm | grep \"test\" | wc -l
     >      52
     >      $ grep test-target gnu/packages/*scm | grep \"tests\" | wc -l
     >      8
     >      
     >      I guess the real question is, will running an extra `make test' after
     >      `make check' break anything? Also, I'm sure some of the makefiles have
     >      one as an alias of the other, we don't want to run the tests twice.
     >      
     >      
     >      -- 
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     ng0
     For non-prism friendly talk find me on http://www.psyced.org

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