Not sure which build method (cmake or old ./configure && make) is the official way now but seems that each of these method runs different test suite at "make test".

That's the first problem.

Second problem is that running old way - "./configure; make; make test" doesn't exit with non-zero status if any test fails. exit status is always 0 regardless of actual test result.

Fedora, PLD and possibly other distros use 'make test' to run test suite. With exit status being always 0 that test is useless.