Re: Some testing issues

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 > And lastly, in one case, the test succeeds
 > without the set-window-buffer call when run interactively, but fails
 > without it when run in batch mode from the shell.  Any idea what's going
 > on here?  (If anyone wants to take a closer look, comments in the test
 > file point out the problematic cases.)

The interactive call might succeed because command_loop_1 makes the
selected window's buffer current in

       set_buffer_internal (XBUFFER (XWINDOW (selected_window)->contents));

Supposedly, testing ‘recenter’ doesn't make much sense without a frame.

 > A second problem concerns trying to reference a message in a test.  The
 > function todo-toggle-view-done-items outputs a message if the category
 > contains no done items, and the test captures this by calling
 > current-message immediately after todo-toggle-view-done-items.  This
 > works when running the test interactively, but in a batch run,
 > current-message is nil (though the message is output in the shell).
 > Why?  (I avoid the failure in batch mode by testing a different but
 > effectively equivalent condition.)

‘current-message’ returns "the string currently displayed in the echo
area" and there's no echo area in batch mode.

 > Finally, one of the tests involves a display overlay that hides the item
 > header, which as a consequence, when using todo-mode, prevented the
 > cursor from appearing where the code put point, resulting in a display
 > bug.  I fixed this (in master 264dd81) by moving point to the first
 > visible position after the overlay.  But when running the test, the
 > overlay evidently does not inhibit point, but since the test, following
 > the bugfix code in todo-mode.el, assumes it does, it fails.  It seems
 > that the test environment does not reflect the same display mechanisms
 > that using the code does.  I haven't found a solution or workaround for
 > this, so the test is currently marked ":expected-result :failed".  I
 > hope someone can come up with a better alternative.

You need a frame to display something and there's none in batch mode.
Hence you can't test display features in batch mode.

martin