bug#48113: Module suggestion: timeout

[Simon Josefsson]

Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org> writes:

> So, I don't think the "let's treat timeout like valgrind" approach is going
> to work. Instead, you need to design a way to deal with timeouts, 
> independently.

Hi!  I think Marc's request for functionality to introduce timeouts for
self-tests is a good one.  However I reach the same conclusion as Bruno,
that having a module like valgrind-tests is probably not the best way to
solve it.  To me, having a timeout seems like an essential feature of a
self-test framework.  I know automake isn't primarily a self-test
framework, but it has concepts for it and the test framework has been
improved significantly over the years, so I think adding a timeout
functionality to automake makes sense.  What do bug-automake people
think?

The functionality could be conditioned on the coreutils 'timeout' tool,
and if that tool exists, and appears to work, running all self-tests
under that tool could be done automatically.  The default self-test
timeout be quite generous (say 17 hours?) but it should be easy to
modify both by end-user and project developer.  If we want to be
conservative, the functionality could be opt-in initially, and then
after a few years become the default behaviour.

Thoughts?

/Simon

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