The --no-internal flag avoids building any internal tests/benches
(tests/benches with in="lfs3.c"), which can be useful for quickly
testing high-level things while refactoring. Refactors tend to break all
the internal tests, and it can be a real pain to update everything.
Note that --no-internal can be injected into the build with TESTCFLAGS:
TESTCFLAGS=--no-internal make test-runner -j \
&& ./scripts/test.py -j -b
For a curious data point, here's the current number of
internal/non-internal tests:
suites cases perms
total: 24 808 633968/776298
internal: 22 (91.7%) 532 (65.8%) 220316/310247 (34.8%)
non-internal: 2 ( 8.3%) 276 (34.2%) 413652/466051 (65.2%)
It's interesting to note that while internal tests have more test cases,
the non-internal tests generate a larger number of test permutations.
This is probably because internal tests tend to target specific corner
cases/known failure points, and don't invite much variants.
---
While --no-internal may be useful for high-level testing during a
refactor, I'm not sure it's a good idea to rely on it for _debugging_ a
refactor.
The whole point of internal testing is to catch low-level bugs early,
with as little unnecessary state as possible. Skipping these to debug
integration tests is a bit counterproductive!
Christopher Haster
c87361508b