[Python-Dev] OS X buildbots: why am I skipping these tests?

[Brett Cannon]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 15:01, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
>>> When Tim Peters added it, he wanted it to tell him whether he did the
>>> Windows build correctly, INCLUDING ALL OPTIONAL PACKAGES that can
>>> possibly work on Windows. If you try to generalize this beyond Windows,
>>> then the only skips that are expected are the ones for tests that
>>> absolutely cannot work on the platform - i.e. Unix tests on Windows,
>>> and Windows tests on Unix. Otherwise, if you can get it to pass by
>>> installing additional software, Tim did *not* mean this to be an
>>> expected skip.
>>
>> Interesting. Do you use it that way when you make the Windows build?
>
> You want a honest answer?

Of course. You're amongst friends. =)

> I usually don't run the test suite on Windows,
> and trust that the packaging will tell me if an extension module failed
> to build (and otherwise trust that if the setup worked for the release
> candidate, it will also work for the final release).

Seems reasonable.

>
> Independent of that, I also decided to entirely ignore the notion of
> expected skipped test (so even if I would run the test suite, I wouldn't
> bother if one was reported as skipped).

Yeah, I remember you bringing this up years ago. I think that
"unexpected" is a bad term and should be renamed to reflect the fact
that the test was skipped because an optional third-party package was
not included. Or simply output why a certain test was skipped at the
end of the test suite run (I know it is outputted when the individual
test is skipped, but it would be easier to read that info at the end
during the summary of results).