Does D have too many features?

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 30-04-2012 05:03, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 11:39:02PM +0200, deadalnix wrote:
>> Le 29/04/2012 22:54, Alex Rønne Petersen a écrit :
>>> D unit tests were never really useful for anything beyond
>>> single-library projects IMHO. They don't scale for large, real-world
>>> application projects with lots of libraries and executables.
>>>
>>
>> +1 A good std.unittest + attributes is probably a better approach.
>
> The only reason I actually write unittests for D code is because
> unittest{} is so convenient. If I had to import std.unittest, most
> likely my code will have no unittests at all.
>
> I find that because unittest{} makes it so convenient to write
> unittests, it's just embarrassing to not write them. Which is kinda the
> point, 'cos in my experience the act of writing a unittest automatically
> makes you think about corner cases in the code you just wrote (or just
> about to write), which means there will be less bugs from the get-go.
>
> Also, unittest is just that: for _unit_ tests. If you start needing an
> entire framework for them, then you're no longer talking about _unit_
> tests, you're talking about module- or package-level testing frameworks,
> and you should be using something more suitable for that, not unittest.
>
>
> T
>

The problem with D's unit test support is that it doesn't integrate well 
into real world build processes. I usually have debug and release 
configurations, and that's it. No test configuration; not only does that 
over-complicate things, but it also isn't really useful. I want my unit 
testing to be exhaustive; i.e. I want to test my code in debug and 
release builds, because those are the builds people are going to be 
using. Not a test build.

So, this means that writing unit tests inline is a no-go because that 
would require either always building with unit tests in all 
configurations (madness) or having a test configuration (see above).

Given the above, I've resorted to having a "tester" executable which 
links in all libraries in my project and tests every module. This means 
that I have to write my unit tests inside this helper executable, making 
much of the gain in D's unittest blocks go away.

And no, the fact that I link libraries into the helper executable 
doesn't mean that I can just write the unit tests in the libraries in 
the first place. Doing so would require building them twice: Once for 
the normal build and once for the "tester" executable.

(And yes, build times matter when your project gets large enough, even 
in D.)

-- 
- Alex