Re: In-core regression tests for replication, cascading, archiving, PITR, etc.

On Thu, Feb 04, 2016 at 09:13:46PM +0300, Victor Wagner wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Feb 2016 18:33:27 +0300 Michael Paquier  wrote:

> > > Really, it is not so hard to add configure checks for perl modules.
> > > And we need to test not only for IPC::Run, but for Test::More too,
> > > because some Linux distributions put modules which come with perl
> > > into separate package.  
> > 
> > The last time we discussed about that on this list we concluded that
> > it was not really necessary to have such checks, for one it makes the
> > code more simple, and because this is leveraged by the presence of
> > --enable-tap-tests, tests which can get actually costly with
> > check-world. But this is digressing the subject of this thread, which
> > deals with the fact of having recovery tests integrated in core...
> 
> Of course, such configure tests should be run only if
> --enable-tap-tests is passed to the configure script
> 
> It would look  like
> 
> if test "$enable_tap_tests" = "yes"; then
>   AX_PROG_PERL_MODULES( Test::More, , AC_MSG_ERROR([Test::More is
>   necessary to run TAP Tests])
>   AX_PROG_PERL_MODULES( IPC::Run, , AC_MSG_ERROR([IPC::Run is
>   necessary to run TAP Tests])
> fi
> 
> in the configure.in
> 
> May be it is not strictly necessary, but it is really useful to see
> such problems as clear error message during configure stage, rather
> than successfully configure, compile, run tests and only then find out,
> that something is forgotten.
> 
> I don't see why having such tests in the configure.in, makes code more
> complex. It just prevents configure to finish successfully if
> --enable-tap-tests is specified and required modules are not available.

Even if detecting missing modules at "configure" time is the right thing, it
belongs in a distinct patch, discussed on a distinct thread.  The absence of
IPC::Run affects the proposed replication tests in the same way it affects
current TAP suites, so this thread has no business revisiting it.