[darcs-users] darcs patch: Do not use Perl test harness. (and 3 more)

Jason Dagit dagit at codersbase.com
Thu Oct 16 19:14:53 UTC 2008


On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Mark Stosberg <mark at summersault.com>wrote:

>
> > Mark: if you're reading this, I wanted to thank you for all the hard work
> > if you've put into setting up the Perl testing infrastructure.  It had
> some
> > really cool features, but I think that our preference for simpler tests
> > and simpler infrastructure outweighs our desire for features.  The recent
> > licensing issues and Windows buildbot issues were basically just piling
> on
> > that extra bit of motivation to go ahead and make this change.  Anyway,
> > thanks again!  I hope to see lots of nice shell tests from you (and hey
> > hopefully some darcs code?) in the future.
>
> I appreciate that David let me write tests in Perl in the first place.
>
> I think that was a strategic move, because it allowed someone to contribute
> and
> help the project who otherwise wouldn't and increased the quality of the
> project at that time.


Thanks Mark.  I speculate that at that time no one foresaw the the reasons
to switch that we have now.

I also understand that new concerns are coming up now, and I appreciate the
> benefits of simplicity.  I also respect that the current test suite
> maintainers
> may have different choices about the best tools to use, and I feel now like
> David may have felt at that the time, that the people actually doing the
> work
> should have some amount of freedom in how they implement the solution.


Speaking of which...I think Zooko makes a really wise point when he
recommends our tests be written in the same language we use, Haskell.  The
benefit is that we already require a Haskell compiler.  This would certainly
help address the test suite portability issues we have.  But, I guess the
big reasons to not do that are:
1) It's a lot of work to convert all the tests to a new language.
2) It's really easy to tell our .sh scripts are doing in terms of real
commands to reproduce it.

Then again, maybe the easier thing is to find a different shell for using on
windows.  Maybe there is a Haskell based bash-ism tolerant shell we could
recommend for windows testers.

Overall, I'm glad the project is continuing to move forward, and I thank
> those
> who have helped in the past, and who continue to carry on the work.


Yes.  Progress is nice, and every time a test catches a bug I just want to
thank each and every test contributor.  It's really wonderful to have a test
suite.

Thanks,
Jason
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