[ENH][TEST] ClassBuilder format tests

Julian Fitzell julian at beta4.com
Wed Jan 7 18:09:54 UTC 2004


ducasse wrote:
> 
> On 7 janv. 04, at 08:12, Julian Fitzell wrote:
> 
>> I dunno - the majority of people are not going to want those tests 
>> most of the time.  The only people who really need them are people 
>> hacking on the core image itself, not users of it.
> 
> 
> Do you think that tests on integers, strings, collections are really 
> useless?

No, *I* think they're very useful.  But I don't think Joe Schmoe 
application user, or even Joe Schmoe application developer cares 99% of 
the time.

>> I don't feel that strongly, but every time something like this comes 
>> up it seems we eventually agree we're trying to *limit* the number of 
>> things being pushed out the update stream.  It's only a few clicks to 
>> install the tests and it's easily done for those who want them.  Those 
>> who don't are never going to run them anyway, so we don't gain 
>> anything by forcing them out there.
> 
> 
> I disagree,  consider tests as documentation. You do not want a newbie 
> to load a test package. It should be there. Tests are cheap in space, 
> easy to remove and we can remove these is less that few clicks.
> There are so few people taking care of tests that we should make their 
> life easy. Because you see if the test would be in the image
> then boris would have just been able to publish in three minutes a new 
> test. And not have to load the testpackage.....
> Now I have to check if this is a method or a new test case....boring 
> boring boring.
> 
> I spent enough time on that.

We're back to mixing up the issues again.  I don't object to tests being 
in the image; I have a problem with them being in the *update stream*. 
Publishing package updates in the update stream is a horribly ugly and 
confusing mix of two paradigms.

The newest version of the test package is always on squeakmap - this 
means that the one in the update stream will frequently be out of date. 
  This is confusing.  If we think core *developers* need an easier way 
to load the tests than choosing it from list of packages then we should 
create an easier way for them to do so.  Putting them in the update 
stream, imo, just confuses things.

Forget 3 minutes; Boris *should* be able to load the test package in 20 
seconds, write a test, and then publish it in 20 seconds.  That should 
be doable and we need to make sure it is.  I don't see how not loading a 
package is a prerequisite to making something easy.  If loading packages 
is that hard, we have bigger problems we'd better solve.

As best as I can understand, you're trying to encourage average 
developers to write test cases as they go along.  And you feel that they 
are less likely to do so because the test suite isn't in the image.  If 
I agree with this... so let's put the tests in the image.  When we build 
the release image we need to add the test suite along with all the other 
extra packages.  It doesn't need to be in the update stream to do this.

Julian




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