Re: Proposed environment variable to skip running tests

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

address@hidden skribis:

> I would like to propose an environment variable that can be used to
> skip tests, e.g. export GUIX_SKIP_TESTS=1
>
> This could be implemented by changing line 297 of
> guix/guix/build/gnu-build-system.scm:
>
> (define* (check #:key target (make-flags '()) (tests? (not target))
>                 (test-target "check") (parallel-tests? #t)
>                 #:allow-other-keys)
>   (if (and tests? (not (getenv "GUIX_SKIP_TESTS"))) ;;;;;; HERE

Since builds are performed in an isolated environments with a clearly
defined set of environment variables.  Thus what you define would not
work as-is.

To achieve it, we’d have to, for instance, instruct guix-daemon to
special-case ‘GUIX_SKIP_TESTS’ and let it through in the build
environment.

Even though I can imagine the pain you feel while rebuilding everything
on GNU/Hurd, I’m reluctant to such changes.  I would suggest using
tricks to avoid full rebuilds in your case as much as possible.  (If you
provide concrete examples of rebuilds you’d like to avoid, I can perhaps
illustrate what “tricks” you could use.  :-))

Thanks,
Ludo’.