tags 16291 notabug close 16291 stop On 12/29/2013 10:49 PM, Ludovic Courtès wrote: > Hello! > > While upgrading the GNU system to Automake 1.14.1, I noticed that a few > tests emit warnings like this: > SKIPs are not warning, just informative messages explaining why some tests couldn't be run.
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- > SKIP: t/spy-rm.tap 1 # SKIP /bin/rm not found > PASS: t/spy-rm.tap 2 - rm -f > SKIP: t/spy-rm.tap 3 # SKIP /bin/rm not found > PASS: t/spy-rm.tap 4 - rm -rf > SKIP: t/spy-rm.tap 5 # SKIP /bin/rm not found > PASS: t/spy-rm.tap 6 - rm -fr > --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- > > There’s no /bin/rm in Guix build environments, hence the message (in > fact, there’s no /bin at all.) > This is not a problem, since our test is smart enough to skip the checks that would require the non-existent /bin/rm program. > However, in general, I think packages should not rely on hardcoded file > names, and instead use AC_PATH_PROG or similar mechanisms to get the > right file name. > Not in this case. The test is a "spy" check that tries to determine whether either (1) the first 'rm' in PATH or (2) '/bin/rm' *if present* is deficient, in that it errors out when the -f option is specified and no non-option argument is passed. If /bin/rm does not exist, it can't be deficient, so the test correctly passes (I assume that happened in your setup, right? If not, that would be a bug, and you'd be justified to reopen this report). > Would it be possible to change these tests to use ‘rm’ instead of /bin/rm? > What do you think? > That would be a bad idea, because we would miss warning from systems where /bin/rm is deficient but the user has installed a better rm (maybe from GNU coreutils) earlier in PATH. If all you are seeing are few SKIP messages and no failure, I don't think there is any problem to fix; everything is working as intended. Thanks, Stefano