autopkgtest fails due to tests/test_gil.py::TestGIL::test_rectbivariatespline being killed by oom killer

[Tiago Stürmer Daitx]

Recent autopkgtest runs of scipy have been failing due to tests/test_gil.py::TestGIL::test_rectbivariatespline causing the python interpreter to be killed by OOM killer as the autopkgtest instance usually does not have enough RAM to run it.

An example of a run failure can be seen at [1].

Local tests indicate that TestGIL::test_rectbivariatespline requires about 1.5 GiB of available RAM to pass.

The test needs to be skipped for the autopkgtest to pass. It can be done by:
1. Adding a @pytest.mark.skipif decorator to it to check for ram availability
2. Adding a @pytest.mark.skip to it to always skip, even when the instance could run it
3. Skipping it in scipy/conftest.py by adding a clause to check for the item.nodeid in the pytest_runtest_setup(item) function.

All options require a patch in debian/patches. The code under debian/tests/python3 only set tests as "skipped" *after* they have been run, directly over the results in junit.xml after all tests are run - so it is not an option since the python instance is killed while tests are being run.

References:
[1] https://objectstorage.prodstack4-5.canonical.com/v1/AUTH_77e2ada1e7a84929a74ba3b87153c0ac/autopkgtest-focal/focal/amd64/s/scipy/20200327_041737_f50f1@/log.gz

[Tiago Stürmer Daitx (tdaitx)]

Due to the package name change (python-scipy to scipy) it was no longer being run in autopkgtest's big_instance, thus the failure.

So as an alternative to low ram systems the proposed merge does workaround the issue and no debdiff is required.

[Tiago Stürmer Daitx (tdaitx)]

Attaching debdiff in case scipy's autopkgtest must be run in a low ram scenario.