Hi Ken,
yep: you could argue that maybe it's time to split the Moodle distribution package into two different packages, one strictly for the production i.e. w/o any kind of test ("base code"), the other including the tests for kind of staging env, to provide feedback about your ecosystem when running those tests (given that the staging env should be almost equal to production).
Makes sense to me but it means that you're supposed to select the right package depending on your deployment policies.
HTH,
Matteo