Re: (not) testing Rust packages?!

[John Soo <jsoo1@asu.edu>]

Hi Andreas,

> On Jan 29, 2020, at 11:01 AM, Andreas Rottmann <mail@r0tty.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm a new to Guix, and am not sure what you mean by "safely" and
> "unwanted store outputs". Running `cargo test` takes the crate source,
> and the closure of any `dependencies` and `dev-dependencies`, and
> produces no real artifacts that make sense to put in the store, as far
> as I can see. The only noteworthy artifact is the stdout/stderr ouput
> produced, as well as the exit status, but I guess that's not relevant to
> the store.

Oh I could see how “safely” would be confusing. I meant that we would not populate anything in the store as you suggest.

> Having tests run would be great: it's a service to the Rust ecosystem,
> and can also help catch issues in packaging, as was already pointed
> out. How likely catching issues is depends on the testsuite quality of
> the crate in question, but that's not at all an argument against running
> tests, of course!

Agreed.

> This may have come across wrong: I just wanted to point out that it may
> mean more packaging effort, but it seems Guix is in a good position here
> already.

Ah yeah I probably came across wrong, too. You are definitely right that there will be more packaging effort. I think at some point it should get easier once the popular test dependencies get in.

What do you think?

John