[asdf-devel] ASDF test-op question

[Robert Goldman]

Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 12:00 AM, Robert Goldman <rpgoldman at sift.info> wrote:
>>> In particular because it's my impression that the problems have been
>>> over-stated.
> 
> I think so. And this is indicated by the following paragraphs

[..snip..]
> 
>> 2.  One needs to come up with a means of combining operation results
>> that takes into account the structure of the plan that traverse produces
>> and that operate then executes.  If in order to test-op X, I must
>> test-op A and B, how do I combine together the test results from A, B,
>> and X into a top-level operation result.  Perhaps OPERATION-ANCESTOR can
>> be pressed into service.
> 
> You are just imposing too much complexity. If I want to test package
> Cl-UNICODE, I do nont want to test FLEXI-STREAMS or U-SOCKETS. Tests
> should be atomic and not generate a tree of actions like ASDF does not
> for everything.

Please see earlier discussion about this topic.

The point I made there is that systems may have COMPONENT subsystems
such that you want to test the entire system together.

Consider, e.g., a DB library with multiple backends, each described in a
separate system.  In order to do the test-op on the DB library you want
to do the test on all active backends.  Similarly, McCLIM has multiple
graphics display backends, not all of which are loaded at a given time.
   I work actively on three (or four, depending on how you count) large
CL-based applications.  Each one of them is made up of multiple ASDF
subsystems.

The example of CL-UNICODE is a strawman, because it is the case of
testing a system and its libraries.  There is also the case of testing a
system and its subsystems, which is the more interesting one.

For that matter, though, if I am a CL-UNICODE /user/, I may very well
want to test to see if it will work in its current installation, in
which case I /do/ want to test FLEXI-STREAMS and U-SOCKETS, because I
want to know whether my installation works.

[..snip..]