Ted Zlatanov writes:
> OK.  I'm OK with just the blamelist for failed builds, though I would
> always add Katsumi Yamaoka, Lars, and me to it.

OK, will do. Lars and Katsumi, if you're reading this, please let me
know if this is OK.

>>> Also does it run the ERT tests?  I think it should, maybe as a separate
>>> target.  The registry.el and gnus-registry.el ERT tests write files to
>>> the filesystem (using `make-temp-file') but otherwise there are no side
>>> effects.
>
> DE> Not yet. I think we should use another Makefile rule for that. I'll see
> DE> to it that I add something, probably 'make check', which will then
> DE> depend on many smaller rules which run specific tests (like the registry
> DE> tests).
>
> Up to you, however you want to do it.

I've now added a new rule 'check' which will run the whole test suite. I
think it's a good thing to have a rule for every test in lisp/Makefile,
since during development one often has to run single tests and not the
whole suite. I've now started with "test-registry".

Problem is: ERT does not run under Emacs 22, nor under XEmacs. So only
Emacs 23 and 24 will currently run the tests. Maybe someone will port
ERT to XEmacs, then we can add that any time.

I've also written a little test for NNTP connections; I've attached it
to this mail. It also shows how one can test "real" Gnus functionality
in batch mode on the buildbot server. It will connect news.gmane.org,
get gmane.discuss, retrieve a single article from it (via message-id)
and exit Gnus. The problem with these kinds of tests is that they depend
on an external server. I added a simple check so that those test will
only run if a ping to news.gmane.org succeeds, but still, the server
might have other problems, which will lead to a failing test. So a
failed NNTP test might not necessarily mean the last commit actually
broke something, but a look in the logs should clear that up.

The reason I did not commit gnustest-nntp.el yet is that I don't know
where it should live. I'm hesitant to add it to gnus/lisp, because maybe
we should have a dedicated directory for tests? We could also put other
files in there we'll need for testing (some dummy mails for populating
an IMAP folder, for instance). Suggestions?

-David