On Tuesday 12 November 2002 04:52 pm, Swan, Dean wrote:

> I really like the direction that the image factoring/modularization
> work is currently going (as in SM and DVS), but I also really like
> that an "official release" image of Squeak like 3.2-4956 has been
> fairly well excercised as a whole, and can be trusted as fairly
> stable and reliable "right-out-of-the-box".
>
> I'm not too excited about the idea of having to take an "official
> release" of the Squeak kernel and add packages in my own unique
> combination to get the image I want then have to spend lots of time
> verifying my newly constructed image.

I think that (as Michael said) we can have the best of both worlds if 
we have "release testing" and provide different flavors of 
pre-packaged, pre-tested images (or scripts that will construct them 
easily).

That said, I rather like the new CPANPlus functionality that the Perl 
community has: if you load a module from CPAN that has unit tests, 
the tests are run. If the tests fail, CPANPlus asks if you want to 
send bug reports to CPAN (or somewhere; I'm not sure where they go). 
If you agree, the bug reports are both stored on a server, available 
via a web interface, and sent via email to the maintainer.

As a CPAN author, these reports have been helpful from time to time in 
detecting problems common to a particular configuration.

I'd like to see this (optional) ability for those packages that 
provide tests. And I'd encourage package maintainers/authors to 
actually write tests (not that I have any for my packages, of 
course...)

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE