launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Aaron Bentley <aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On 10-12-13 11:05 AM, Julian Edwards wrote:
> I think most of us have a pretty good idea of what constitutes a slow test 
> now, and where the time is lost in those.  I don't think you need absolute 
> numbers.

I think that we'll have a better idea if we articulate our goals.  I
think that reasonable people could disagree over whether a 1-second test
is too slow.

One way of looking at this is to say that we'd like the test suite to
complete in half an hour.  We currently have 11454 tests, so that means
we'd like our tests to take .16 seconds on average.  From this
perspective, a 1-second test is *way* too slow.

> The big points I think about are:
> 
>  * Favour view tests over page tests - rendering a page is slow
>  * Can your test run without any layers?  i.e. are you just testing a really 
> basic piece of code that doesn't need the database, librarian etc., and can 
> you refactor your code and tests so that most of your tests can run layerless?
>  * Look at what code you are testing and make sure you're testing the absolute 
> minimum of what is necessary.  For example, many of the Soyuz tests are 
> utterly stupid in that they upload a whole package (which is dog slow) just to 
> test a small aspect of the upload processor.  That's something we can make 
> much faster by testing only the appropriate piece of code.

Those are all great suggestions for writing tests, but they don't
directly apply to a reviewer who is trying to asses whether tests are
too slow.

Aaron
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