[fiveam-devel] Unit Test Framework

[Robert Goldman]

On 11/10/12 Nov 10 -11:41 AM, Tapiwa Gutu wrote:
> Faithful hackers,
> 
> I decided to take up the challenge laid down here
> http://fare.livejournal.com/169346.html and try to consolidate the
> Common Lisp unit testing frameworks.I have written a framework that aims
> to consolidate all the major features of all your frameworks mentioned
> in this blog
> http://aperiodic.net/phil/archives/Geekery/notes-on-lisp-testing-frameworks.html.
> 
> You can find it on Github https://github.com/tgutu/clunit. I also wrote
> a blog on the development of the framework and reasons for it here
> http://ml.sun.ac.za/2012/11/09/developing-a-unit-test-framework-part-1/
> if you are interested.
> 
> I would very much appreciate it, if you could join me in this effort and
> we all work together torwards making this project a success.
> 

Executive summary:  Hey! Not so fast!

Longer:

I'm in favor of Faré's approach, but I feel like you are jumping in
faster than I'd like to see us go.  Faré's article suggests these steps:


1. Pick your favorite problem domain
2. Identify all libraries that address it
3. Work with various library authors
4. Pick the most promising library
5. Declare it THE library

It feels to me like you are skipping steps 3 and 4.

I guess I'd like to see a wider discussion of this issue before jumping
to #5.

At SIFT, we ended up choosing FiveAM as THE library, for our purposes.
Are you saying that cl-unit is the most promising? If so, why?

Or are you saying that "None of the above" is the most promising, and we
need to build YA framework from scratch?  That is not at all what Faré
was arguing for, as I read it.  Certainly the write-up by Olin Shivers
should be read as a push to fix an existing framework, rather than
develop a new one.

If you are proposing that we take cl-unit, what are you planning to do
to provide a compatibility layer for people whose decisions are
different for yours?  Are you going to make it possible for people who
use FiveAM to migrate their existing test suites without a lot of work?

What's your plan to do this task that Faré identifies:

"To fully solve the problem domain, we must identify all the libraries,
and all their current and desired features, so that we may provide a
100% replacement to each and every one of these existing libraries,
based on an architecture that makes all the future features possible."

That sounds to me like the right thing to do now is try to come to
consensus around a requirements document.

I don't think that jumping into setting up a repo and slinging code is
the right place to be now.  Please do a little more consensus building
and more "work with various library authors" and working with library
users, so that you are not building YA 80% solution.



Thanks!
r