From: Dmitry Kurochkin <dmitry.kurochkin@gmail.com>
To: Thomas Jost <schnouki@schnouki.net>,
	Jameson Graef Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net>, notmuch@notmuchmail.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] test: run emacs inside tmux if screen is not available
In-Reply-To: <8762mw7rdk.fsf@schnouki.net>
References: <1309496122-4965-2-git-send-email-dmitry.kurochkin@gmail.com>
	<1311165396-12268-1-git-send-email-schnouki@schnouki.net>
	<87d3h5ul7k.fsf@gmail.com>
	<87k4bc275l.fsf@servo.factory.finestructure.net>
	<8762mw7rdk.fsf@schnouki.net>
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Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:25:33 +0400
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On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:12:55 +0200, Thomas Jost <schnouki@schnouki.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:28:38 -0700, Jameson Graef Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net> wrote:
> Non-text part: multipart/signed
> > On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:37:35 +0400, Dmitry Kurochkin <dmitry.kurochkin@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:36:36 +0200, Thomas Jost <schnouki@schnouki.net> wrote:
> > > > Before this change, the test suite reported many failed tests on machines where
> > > > screen is not installed (which is the case of many *BSD systems). This patch
> > > > makes the test suite try to use tmux, another terminal multiplexer, if screen is
> > > > not available.
> > > 
> > > This is a nice improvement.  But I think we should make it even better :)
> > > There are more terminal emulators besides screen and tmux (dtach comes
> > > to mind).  We need a more general mechanism for trying them.  There
> > > should be a list of commands for running terminal emulators in the order
> > > of preference (I think that is dtach, tmux, screen), and we should try
> > > each one in a loop (this would also avoid repeating the long emacs
> > > command).
> > 
> > Hi, guys.  I suppose you can go down this route if you want, but I worry
> > that it just adds a lot of extra code to the test suite that will
> > ultimately make it less robust.  What's wrong with just depending on
> > screen for the tests?  I'm sure screen is available on every operating
> > system that we currently support.
> > 
> > It makes me wary that we would be starting a precedent for making a
> > bunch of conditionals for all of the possible alternative tools we use
> > in the test suite.  Maybe that's an overblown concern, though.
> > 
> > jamie.
> 
> You're right, just depending on screen would be enough (the package is
> just 864 kB on Arch Linux...), and supporting alternative tools
> would make the test suite more complicated and less robust. But the
> dependency on screen should be more *explicit*: if it's not available,
> the test suite should skip all the emacs tests and display a message
> about screen.
> 
> Apparently test-lib.sh includes some things about prerequisites. I'll
> try to use these to implement the explicit dependency on screen.
> 

Full ack.  The only reason I did not implement it in the original patch
is because there is an existing patch series [1] that adds proper
prerequisites for gdb, emacs and gpg.  So instead of reimplementing the
same thing, I decided to wait until that series is merged and add screen
prerequisite later.

Regards,
  Dmitry

[1] id:"1307016220-17509-1-git-send-email-pieter@praet.org"

> Regards,
> 
> -- 
> Thomas/Schnouki
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