Comment 11 for bug 1349832

On Sep 09, 2014, at 02:02 AM, Matthias Klose wrote:

>we are trying to not include any "upstream" eco system into main, like
>seen with maven. where we do it, we have continuous problems updating
>and fixing issues like with ruby-rails. python-pip tox are build-
>dependencies only, so please just avoid these during the build.

I don't know the history of the maven problems, but I don't think pip,
virtualenv, or tox have been very difficult to maintain in either Debian or
Ubuntu. All upstreams are pretty friendly and in the past have actively
addressed issues that we have relating to these packages.

tox is really not an ecosystem tool, it's a testing tool. It happens to run
tests in a virtualenv and *can* use pip (although as a build-time test runner,
especially with pybuild, it won't be able to do anything interesting with
pip).

Ultimately I think we're swimming upstream to deny tox in main, since it's use
is pervasive and growing, and it's the only good one-command, no-guessing way
to run a test suite.

We know the fact that our cross-pocket restrictions, especially for build-deps
is a problem (thus archive reorg). I don't think it will always be possible
to just say "don't use tox to run your test suite" and I don't think it's a
good idea to avoid running a test suite at build time. DEP-8 tests run in
different environments and usually do not run automatically when doing local
testing so they are not a substitute for build-time tests. So I disagree with
prohibiting a common test tool from main.

All that said, in the particular case of system-image, I will see if it's
possible to bypass tox, but I'm not willing to avoid running its test suite at
build time.