Can I do an or in a version block?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 11:28:24AM -0700, Ali Çehreli wrote:
[...]
> We are getting a little off topic here but I've been following the
> recent unit test thread about writing to files. Unit tests should not
> have external interactions like that either. For example, no test
> should connect to an actual server to do some interaction.  Developers
> wouldn't want that to happen every time a .d file is compiled. :)
> (Solutions like mocks, fakes, stubs, etc. do exist. And yes, I know
> that they are sometimes non-trivial.)
[...]

It's not about whether unittests should write to files, but about
testing a part of the code that operates on files. So you create some
test data in the unittest and put it in the file, then pass the file to
the function being tested.

Ideally, this should be done in some kind of tmpfs, which is only
accessible to the program, and which is discarded by the OS once the
testing is finished.

You still have the case of non-trivial test data, though. Sometimes
there's a large dataset with a known result that you want to use in a
unittest, to ensure that your latest changes didn't break a known
non-trivial working case.

I suppose you could argue that these kinds of tests belong in an
external test framework, but that's the kind of thing that discourages
people from actually writing test cases in the first place. I know I'll
be too lazy to do this if it wasn't as simple as adding a unittest block
to my code. It's just too much trouble to implement an external
framework, write the test case in a separate file, update the build
system to include it in the test suite, only to have to scrap a lot of
this effort later when you suddenly realize that there's a better
algorithm you can use which invalidates most of the original test case.
Whereas if this was just an embedded unittest block, you can delete or
comment out the block, replace it with a new test relevant to the new
code, and keep going.

Seems like a small difference, but having to edit 2-3 different files
just to update a test case as opposed to continuing to work with the
same source file you've been working on can make the difference between
the programmer deciding to put it off till later (which usually means it
doesn't get done) vs. doing it immediately without too much interruption
(test cases are up-to-date and more thorough).


T

-- 
I'm still trying to find a pun for "punishment"...