Milan Zimmermann wrote:
> On 2007 January 29 16:58, Colin Putney wrote:
>   
>> On Jan 29, 2007, at 9:23 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>     
>>> I actually side with Ralph on this one. It is very satisfying to
>>> see the test runner turn green. With tests in the image that you
>>> cannot fix, you will never get this satisfaction.
>>>       
>> True, the green bar is very satisfying. But Ralph's reasons go a bit
>> deeper. The purpose of a test suite is to provide immediate feedback
>> on during development. Running the suite is like asking "how am I
>> doing?" A green bar means "fine," and a red bar means, "STOP! You
>>     
Yes except that the current suite of tests take ages to run, and so does 
not fulfil this goal.

The solution which already exists! Is to categorise the tests, so that a 
suite of short tests can be run more frequently in less than 2 minutes.

If you have this categorisation then it is trivial to have a category of 
'known issues', which you simply do not run if you want to see your 
green light.

The improved TestRunner, times each test, and can automatically sort the 
long from the short, the network using tests from the non-network using 
tests etc.

Not forgetting that there are other categories of tests needed in order 
to get that all hallowed green bar, such as: tests that I would not 
expect to work on my platform, or tests that will not work on the vm 
that I am using, and tests that will not work in this version of the image.

Pulling your known issues tests into a separate class, is not a good 
solution because then you loose the ability to subclass from TestCase 
sensibly.

Pulling your known issues into a separate package is not a good 
solution, because then you loose the context for those tests, since they 
belong in the same context as those tests which pass. You need that 
context if you are ever going to fix them.

Finally, breaking things up physically, rather than tagging things 
'mentally' so to speak ruins any kind of smooth workflow. Write test fix 
test, becomes write test in one place, when it works move it to another 
place, debug it again in the new context.

To try the improved TestRunner, try

Installer fixBug: 5639.

best regards

Keith



	
	
		
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