Re: TAP tests - installcheck vs check

Andrew Dunstan <andrew(dot)dunstan(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> AFAICT, unlike the pg_regress checks, which in the installcheck case run
> against a running instance of postgres, for TAP tests the only
> difference is that that for the check case a temp install is done,
> possibly with some extra contrib modules. Is that correct? If is is, why
> aren't we providing an installcheck target for tests like recover. In at
> least one case (buildfarmn jacana) installs are quite expensive (2 or 3
> minutes) and if they are pointless as seems to be the case here why
> can't we just avoid them?

A lot of those test cases involve setting non-default configuration
parameters and/or stopping/starting the postmaster. So I can't see how
we would run them against a pre-existing live cluster, which is the usual
meaning of "make installcheck".

I think what you're imagining is skipping redundant builds of the
"tmp_install" tree by using an installation tree with a temporary $PGDATA
directory. That seems like a fine idea, but we need another word for it.

regards, tom lane