*: Stop using head? conditionals in test blocks

[issyl0]

• Have you followed the guidelines for contributing?
• Have you ensured that your commits follow the commit style guide?
• Have you checked that there aren't other open pull requests for the same formula update/change?
• Have you built your formula locally with HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_FROM_API=1 brew install --build-from-source <formula>, where <formula> is the name of the formula you're submitting?
• Is your test running fine brew test <formula>, where <formula> is the name of the formula you're submitting?
• Does your build pass brew audit --strict <formula> (after doing HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_FROM_API=1 brew install --build-from-source <formula>)? If this is a new formula, does it pass brew audit --new <formula>?

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• I thought it didn't make much sense to have head? conditionals in test blocks since we don't test HEAD builds on CI, and the formulae test blocks are mostly for CI confidence.

[MikeMcQuaid]

Makes sense to me but interested if other @homebrew/core folks disagree.

[chenrui333]

make sense 👍

[MikeMcQuaid]

Let's hold off merging until some other folks have a chance to give input (e.g. until tomorrow UK time)

[MikeMcQuaid]

Making a draft so @BrewTestBot leaves it alone until tomorrow. Naughty 🤖 !

[carlocab]

build.head? can be removed, it's definitely nonsense.

I'm less certain about head?. In theory, --HEAD installs are ideally for upstream to use to test their builds so they can do something like brew install --HEAD foo && brew test foo in their CI. In practice, almost no upstream maintainers do this (I can think of maybe 2, but not necessarily in CI).

This means that the impact of removing it is likely small, so it maybe doesn't hurt too much. OTOH, we probably want to be nice to upstream maintainers that do rely on it, if any.

[MikeMcQuaid]

build.head? can be removed, it's definitely nonsense.

That is just brew test --HEAD or not, right?

OTOH, we probably want to be nice to upstream maintainers that do rely on it, if any.

Agreed. A middle ground here could be: we remove them all, if upstream specifically requests that we re-add them: we re-add with a comment linking to them asking for it. How's that sound @carlocab?

[carlocab]

build.head? can be removed, it's definitely nonsense.

That is just brew test --HEAD or not, right?

Huh, maybe 😅. Can't remember if I tested that or not when I was looking at build.head? usage in test blocks. Though not sure why it would be needed if you just used head? instead.

OTOH, we probably want to be nice to upstream maintainers that do rely on it, if any.

Agreed. A middle ground here could be: we remove them all, if upstream specifically requests that we re-add them: we re-add with a comment linking to them asking for it. How's that sound @carlocab?

Yes, sounds fine to me.

[branchvincent]

Works for me, we could also remove the inverse: build.stable?

[MikeMcQuaid]

Thanks again @issyl0!

[issyl0]

Works for me, we could also remove the inverse: build.stable?

I'll get on it!

[chenrui333]

yeah, I almost never find myself using build.head for tests, nor have I seen anyone else use it either.