unittests are really part of the build, not a special run

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 3/30/15 3:30 PM, Dicebot wrote:
> tl: dr: please, no
>
> We have put quite some effort into fighting default DMD behaviour of
> -unittest simply adding to main function and not replacing it. Initially
> many applications did run tests on startup because DMD suggested it is a
> good idea - some rather bad practical experience has shown this was a
> rather bad suggestion. Accidental tests that start doing I/O on
> productions servers, considerably increased restart times for services -
> that kind of issues.

Violent agreement here. I was just saying unittests should be part of 
the build process, not the run process. Running unittests and then the 
app is a bad idea.

> And if you suggest to build both test and normal build as part of single
> compiler call (building test version silently in the background) this is
> also very confusing addition hardly worth its gain.

Making the format of unittest failures better would take us a long way. 
Then we can script builds so the unittest and release build are created 
concurrently.

> Just tweak your editors if that is truly important. It is not like being
> able to click some fancy lines in GUI makes critical usability addition
> to testing.

This is a cultural change more than a pure tooling matter. I think we'd 
do well to change things on the tooling side instead of expecting 
editors to do it for us.


Andrei