Re: Caching test results separately?

[Ryan Prior]

------- Original Message -------
On Monday, March 13th, 2023 at 10:21 PM, Josselin Poiret <dev@jpoiret.xyz> 
wrote:

> But I would really like for tests to move out of build phases

I've mentioned this previously in IRC as well. Fundamentally, it strikes me as 
wrong that a change which only affects tests, leaving the installed package the 
same byte for byte, should require a full package re-build.

An improvement would be to treat tests, and their pass/fail status, are 
metadata separate from package builds. In Eelco's thesis, testing is described 
as a major motivator for nix: but in his construction, nix's role is to produce 
package builds, and then you run tests on the outputs to decide whether to 
promote a build into production or not. We should use Guix to create testing, 
staging and production deployments, not to gatekeep and prevent packages with 
failing tests from building.

Many packages I've created or upgraded had some or all tests disabled because 
they require a network stack, eg a client library for postgres requires a 
postgres server. This should be easy to model using Guile and Guix. I would 
love to contribute to development in this direction.

Ryan