Bug#879197: autopkgtest: Please support @testdeps@ i.e. subset of @builddeps@ marked with <!nocheck>

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Ximin, all,

Ximin Luo [2017-10-20 12:23 +0200]:
> These days one is able to mark build-dependencies that are needed to run tests
> by annotating the Build-Depends with <!nocheck>.
> 
> It would be nice to support a @testdeps@ syntax for Depends: in autopkgtest as a
> convenience alias for all of the Build-Depends that are marked with <!nocheck>.
> This helps to avoid duplication and makes it easier to maintain.

<!nocheck> is rather fuzzy.  There is neither a policy nor a reason to require
that *all* test-only dependencies must be marked that way, and this can never
work as some test dependencies are often *also* "real" build dependencies.
Also, these are by no means exhaustive - it's not uncommon to only mark the
"expensive" dependencies with that and let some subset of tests run with the
remaining available packages.

Also, this term is already being used for the package's actual (autopkg)test
dependencies.

As a compromise, I could live with calling this @!nocheck at . This makes it much
clearer what it actually means, and avoids potential confusion. But for the
first reason above I still don't like this much, to be honest.

OOI, is that for an individual package, or a whole group of packages? In the
latter case, using autodep8 might be a better solution?

Thanks,

Martin