[z3-five] Re: Functional doctests for Five

[Stefan H. Holek]

On 29.09.2004, at 17:45, Tres Seaver wrote:
>
> Note that unless you convert them using the 
> "docstring-on-an-empty-method" spelling, you will be changing 
> semantics of the tests:  the "tell-a-story-in-a-text-file" model 
> deliberated does *not* isolate tests from one another.  This is my 
> major beef with doctests:  the "isolated" spelling doesn't have the 
> win that the "story" case does, but the "story" case doesn't (can't) 
> do as good a job of "test one thing only."
>

Are you saying that doctests may "spill over" to subsequent tests? Oh 
yuck! I did not know that.

/me senses disturbance in the force, reaches for light saber ....


> For functional tests, I still don't find the test paradigm very 
> attractive:  the raw, "converted-from-tcpwatch" files are *way* too 
> noisy, and easy to mess up during editing.  Once cleaned, they aren't 
> *too* hard to work with, although I think we won't ever be able to 
> show them to non-programmers (which was a goal of the INI-file format 
> my framework uses).
>

/me agrees. Functional tests can be a neat thing if used as "acceptance 
tests" which are written by the customer (in an ideal world). Customers 
are not coders by definition, so the tcpwatch stuff once again appears 
to be useful to developers only.

Stefan

--
The time has come to start talking about whether the emperor is as well
dressed as we are supposed to think he is.               /Pete McBreen/