Re: List TAP test files in makefiles

On Fri, Oct 24, 2025 at 10:49:53AM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 10:17:59AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> This proposed fix adds more manual maintenance effort, and I really
>> doubt that it will do much to solve the ostensible problem that
>> people forget to update the meson.build files.
>
> This was my reaction, too.  I suspect folks will update either Makefile or
> meson.build based on what they use and then still forget to update the
> other one.

This is not a problem limited to committers: it is a worse an issue
for patch authors and reviewers.  I've seen it again literally three
days ago, where a test was missing from meson, and the CI reported
green without testing the patch in most environments where we use only
meson, aka Windows.

IMO, we should tackle this problem the other way around: what would it
take to have meson build a list of the TAP files in t/ based on an
automated rule when tests.tap is defined?

Another less invasive solution for the code tree would be to have
meson cross-check that the list of files it defines matches with
what's on disk.  With the drop of Makefiles and ./configure at some
point in mind, I am not convinced that the t/*.pl rule needs to
change, but meson could be made more reliable by making sure that
what's listed matches with  what we have in the source tree.  That
would prevent a lot of mistakes.
--
Michael