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[Meta issue, opening separate issues for test cases]
The default install always installs the testsuite together with all the python batteries. So make sure that you can run the testsuite can run from the installed location too.
 - some tests require the sources to run (using the srcdir macro,
 or files not installed, e.g. xxmodule.c).
 - some tests assume write permissions.
 - some tests assume not being run as root.

This has been fixed and broken again several times in the past[1]. We need a buildbot that runs the tests installed[2]. Antoine, do you have any thoughts about how to set up such a thing? I'm willing to host it.
[1] I believe there used to be a program that ran the tests installed, from a cronjob on some dedicated machine somewhere. It also ran a -R run, I think, as well as being part of a job that built the docs. When the doc building strategy was changed, somewhere in the process of the transition to Python3 (the program was Python2 only, I believe), it seems to have been taken offline completely.
[2] failing when run as root is a separate problem, and less practical to set a buildbot run for, though since my buildbots run in VMs, it is not completely out of the question.

We could change an existing buildbot, say one of the snakebite buildbots, to add a `make install` and run the tests from it. I don't think it should be very difficult. Just make sure ./configure --prefix= has a reasonable value like a dedicated directory (rather than /usr/local), avoid --enable-shared, rm -r on the prefix directories prior to the `make install` step, and cd to some clean directory (other than the source or build directories) then run the tests from `<prefix>/bin/python -m test (or test.regrtest for 2.7) ...

It occurs to me that the tricky bit is that the install directory contents should be (a) read-only (easy) and ideally (b) owned by root (a little trickier, but doable with a setuid script or tailored sudo command).

it doesn't have to be root, just another user as for running the testsuite.

Right, it doesn't *have* to be root, but that would be the typical situation when the tests are run with Python installed. Having it be any other user still requires some privilege increase.

How do we stand with eight outstanding issues here?