On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 12:12:13PM +0100, Stefano Lattarini wrote: | On 01/15/2013 07:32 PM, Brandon Black wrote: | > So my conundrum is this: in automake-1.13, the default switched from serial | > testing to parallel testing. The only way I can see to disable this is to | > add "serial-tests" to my AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. However, my AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE | > also only requires version 1.11.6, which I'd like to continue supporting, | > and these older versions of automake will barf on the invalid option | > "serial-tests" (I also tried "no-parallel-tests", but that's also invalid). | > | Yes, the "serial-tests" option was unfortunately only introduced in | Automake 1.12.
We use autotest extensively, and our test scenario is rather complex and relies upon the existing serial behaviour; we setup file systems and databases, we start daemons, etc. We can't use parallel tests at this time. If parallel tests supported a dependency graph a la make or tsort then we could possibly take advantage of that. In my humble opinion, providing an option to control a feature in a major release (1.12.x) then change the default for that feature in the next major release (1.13.x) 7 months later is too short a period. Especially when the time between previous major releases was 2.5 years. Examining the Changelog and release dates: 2009-12-08 Release automake 1.11.1 2012-02-21 Add "serial-tests" support (in "HEAD") 2012-04-13 Release automake 1.11.5 (without "serial-tests") 2012-05-18 Parallel tests now the default (in "HEAD", not 1.11.x) 2012-06-01 Release automake 1.12.1 (with "serial-tests") 2013-01-01 Release automake 1.13.1 (parallel tests now default) This isn't the only backwards incompatible change made recently, and in my humble opinion I think the timeframes introducing backwards incompatibility are too aggressive. From a backwards-compatibility point of view, I think the default should be reverted to serial tests, and make it clearer that parallel tests are available as an option. regards, Luke.
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