One should surely put
$(MAKE) test in both rules.xs and rules.noxs. They can be found in /usr/share/dh-make-perl/, but if you have them in ~/.dh-make-perl/, those will override the system wide files.
It's a shame that I don't know anything about Makefiles, 'cause it would be nice if we could capture and handle output like:
t/12_signals_ev.......skipped: the Event module is not installed
or:
Warning: prerequisite Array::RefElem failed to load: Can't locate Arra
+y/RefElem....
OTOH, they're probably handled by dh-make-perl, so it must be possible to grab it somehow. (Yes, dh-make-perl itself is a perl program (duh :))
2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -e'undef christmas'
Segmentation fault
2;139 juerd@ouranos:~$