Howdy mentors, Why does 'dh build' attempt to run the package's test suite, but doesn't satisfy the run-time dependencies before doing so? How can this be made to work within a pbuilder environment?
I'm packaging a Python application that has a unit test suite. This unit test suite, naturally, imports each of the modules in the application in order to test them. That, in turn, causes any of the 'import bar' statements in the application to be executed. So, the unit test suite will fail in the absence of any one of the package's Python library dependencies. Yet, when I attempt to 'pdebuild' this package, it runs the 'build' target of 'debian/rules', which runs 'dh build', which runs 'dh_auto_test', which runs the application unit test suite. At this point in the process, though, the pbuilder environment does not have the package dependencies installed, so the unit test suite fails, failing the 'pdebuild'. Running 'debian/rules build' shouldn't need the package dependencies installed, because the package isn't being installed yet, only built into a Debian binary package. So why is the package unit test suite run from 'dh build'? Isn't this going to be a problem for every package that has a unit test suite? One possible response would be to list every run-time library dependency as a build dependency, but that seems ludicrous; those libraries aren't needed to build the package, they're only needed when running the application (whether under test or not). Another possibility would be to suppress the 'dh_auto_test', but I don't want to change the way debhelper operates without a very good reason. So far all I have is the fact that it's getting in my way, but that could well be my fault. How is this supposed to work? -- \ “Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it | `\ correct, not tried it.” —Donald Knuth, 1977-03-29 | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
