Bug#870654: autopkgtest: Please add trivial example to documentation

[Christoph Biedl]

Package: autopkgtest
Version: 4.4
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

a while ago, lintian started suggesting adding a test suite declaration
like autopkgtest to my packages. Howwever, autopkgtest's existing
documentation gave me a hard time trying to understand the basic
operation. To put it perhaps a bit too harsh, it feels like the first
three chapters are missing, the chapters that provide the fundamental
information which is so obvious to the creators forgot it might be an
issue. Happens all the time.


So I'm asking to provide a trivial, as simple as possible, "Hello,
world"-ish  example on how to autopkgtest a package. Mostly to provide
autopkgtest newcomers a feeling on how it looks, and to check whether
the setup is otherwise working.


For me the following seemed to do the trick, and feel free to re-use
this:

Add "Testsuite: autopkgtest" to debian/control, as already documented.
Then create debian/tests/control with the following content:

| Depends: @
| Test-Command: /bin/true

This works and should, if I understood correctly, basically test the
installability of the binary package. The Test-Command might be as well
call the program shipped in my package, perhaps calling the --help
option. Make sure it exits zero though.


But I might be completely wrong here, and I shouldn't have to figure
sane autopkgtest usage from wild-guessing. Hence my request.


Related, please consider adding autopkgtest usage to the hello
package, for the same purpose.

Regards,

    Christoph

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.9.40 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: unable to detect

Versions of packages autopkgtest depends on:
pn  apt-utils       <none>
ii  libdpkg-perl    1.18.24+~jj1
ii  procps          2:3.3.12-3
ii  python3         3.5.3-3
ii  python3-debian  0.1.30

Versions of packages autopkgtest recommends:
pn  autodep8  <none>

Versions of packages autopkgtest suggests:
pn  lxc          <none>
pn  lxd-client   <none>
pn  qemu-system  <none>
pn  qemu-utils   <none>
pn  schroot      <none>

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