On Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 03:32  AM, Marcel Weiher wrote:

>> On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 10:50 PM, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
>
>
>>> Run diff(1) and other file comparison tools.
>>> Stuff the dump into an XML library that implements XPath.
>>> Keep the baselines for regression testing *out* of the image.
>>> Give me something that _can't_ crawl across the screen spinning
>>> and croaking while my checking code is trying to look at it.
>>> And so on.
>
> [Colin:]
>
>> Again, this seems very awkward. Doing textual comparisons will be 
>> very fragile.
>
> Yes, but what are the alternatives?  Do you have a good "object-diff" 
> that could be used directly on the object-graph?

No.

My point is that doing a diff, whether textual or object oriented, will 
be fragile. All it can tell you is that something has changed. If 
you're running a unit test, you already know that. You want to know if 
your UI still works correctly after the change, for some definition of 
"correctly." Unit tests provide that definition.

Colin