Hello Andreas,

Sunday, March 26, 2006, 5:08:17 PM, you wrote:

AR> I am in the interesting situation that I'm writing a few tests
AR> that require large data sets for input and where I don't want
AR> people to require to download the data sets. My problem is while
AR> it's easy to determine that the data is missing and skip the test
AR> there isn't a good way of relaying this to the user. From the
AR> user's point of view "all tests are green" even though that
AR> statement is completely meaningless and I'd rather communicate
AR> that in a way that says "X tests skipped" so that one can look at
AR> and decide whether it's useful to re-run the tests with the data
AR> sets or not.

Would it make sense to make separate test case classes for the tests
that take a lot of data, and then users would only get those test
cases if they download the large data sets?

AR> Another place where I've seen this to happen is when platform
AR> specific tests are involved. A test which cannot be run on some
AR> platform should be skipped meaningfully (e.g., by telling the user
AR> it was skipped) rather than to appear green and working.

Personally, I'd make a subclass to hold platform specific tests and
make the whole thing pass if the platform does not match the one for
which the tests were designed.  If the test does not even apply, why
should I get concerned as to why was something skipped when it's ok?

-- 
Best regards,
 Andres                            mailto:sqrmax at optonline.net