elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

[Dane Henson <dane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David,
I understand where you're coming from and I have worried about that in the
past.  There are two approaches for Unit Testing.

The strong approach is to figure out what you want the app to do (i.e.
design the framework), describe that app's functions and libraries using
tests, then write your code around it.  If at some point the requirements
change, you can modify the Unit Tests.  It's boring, but provides a very
stable foundation for apps.

The second approach (and what we would have to do for all existing
projects) is to write the tests around the app.  This approach is like
trying to build a bucket around the water, but it can be done and any
development going forward is more likely to not break the core
functionality of the app.

Would it be feasible to create a Unit Test team on launchpad with the sole
purpose of specializing in adding testing to projects and writing the tests
required to kill regression bugs before they kill us?

Also, Adam (at Yorba) and I came up with the conclusion that rolling a new
Unit Test framework might be the best option.  Here's a quote from Adam at
Yorba: "You might also want to consider rolling your own simple unit
testing framework in Vala without even using Glib.Test - sometimes I think
that might be the easiest path forward here."

So, this could be a really big project, but I see a lot of merit to it.


On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:25 AM, David Gomes <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Unit testing is boring to write so if we just said "Everybody. Write unit
> tests. All Projects. Now." it would really take on. On companies and when
> developers are paid to work, they can write and put tests everywhere, but
> it's harder for us.
>
> For now what we just do is we test the interface, the new features and
> some old features too to see if they remain unaffected.
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Craig <weberc2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I'm curious what you devs do for testing? I'm not particularly familiar
>> with Vala, but I'm learning a lot about testing at work and I'm trying to
>> develop myself to that end in my free time. I'm sending this email because
>> I'd like to get a pulse on what you Elementary devs think about testing and
>> what you actually do to test your code. Also, please feel encouraged to
>> talk about what you've done in the past, what has/hasn't worked for you,
>> and generally what your philosophy is about testing (or whether you have no
>> philosophy). Individual comments and comments on behalf of elementary as a
>> whole are both welcome.
>>
>> Sound off!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Craig
>>
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