Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Artur Malabarba]

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I'm trying to add some tests for features (.el source files) that are
completely devoid of them. So I welcome suggestions of elisp files that
have no tests whatsoever. I also welcome volunteers to help, of course.

Context:
Besides the fact that tests are a good idea, I think that having features
with no test file at all is measurably worse than having just one or two
tests.

When a source file has no corresponding test file, someone contributing to
it feels perfectly entitled to not create one. What's worse, even if they
did want to add a test, there's a chance they might be discouraged by this,
specially if they weren't yet sure how to implement the test.

So it is my opinion that adding tests to these unfortunate files would
provide a bit more benefit for the effort invested.

Best,
Artur

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Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

> When a source file has no corresponding test file, someone contributing to
> it feels perfectly entitled to not create one. What's worse, even if they
> did want to add a test, there's a chance they might be discouraged by this,
> specially if they weren't yet sure how to implement the test.
> 
> So it is my opinion that adding tests to these unfortunate files would
> provide a bit more benefit for the effort invested.

I'm inclined to agree, Artur.  Thank you for starting this initiative.

John

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 23:28:46 +0000
> From: Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com>
> 
> So it is my opinion that adding tests to these unfortunate files would provide
> a bit more benefit for the effort invested. 

I completely agree.  Thanks in advance for doing this.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Michael Albinus]

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

> I'm trying to add some tests for features (.el source files) that are
> completely devoid of them. So I welcome suggestions of elisp files
> that have no tests whatsoever. I also welcome volunteers to help, of
> course. 

Last year, I've started to write vc-tests.el. I have not enough
knowledge about vc to do it on my own, but I was enouraged by Eric
Raymond to do so. Unfortunately, he stopped to support me after a while,
so the work is stalled since then.

If somebody with more knowledge about vc than me would join that work, I
would be willing to continue. Could you help me with this? Other
volunteers?

In parallel, it might be useful to work on Bug#19548. As Glenn said, the
documentation lacks the changes which have been applied last year.

> Best, 
> Artur 

Best regards, Michael.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Artur Malabarba]

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On 28 Oct 2015 7:20 pm, "Michael Albinus" <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote:
> Last year, I've started to write vc-tests.el. I have not enough
> knowledge about vc to do it on my own, but I was enouraged by Eric
> Raymond to do so. Unfortunately, he stopped to support me after a while,
> so the work is stalled since then.

Still, did you get to push this partial progress?

> If somebody with more knowledge about vc than me would join that work, I
> would be willing to continue. Could you help me with this? Other
> volunteers?

I'm not a user of vc, but let us know your questions, maybe I can help with
some. Or maybe a vc user will jump in (this list is full of them ;-).
Really, don't be afraid to ask.

> In parallel, it might be useful to work on Bug#19548. As Glenn said, the
> documentation lacks the changes which have been applied last year.

Documentation is certainly another good way to help.

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Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Michael Albinus]

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

> On 28 Oct 2015 7:20 pm, "Michael Albinus" <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
> wrote:
>> Last year, I've started to write vc-tests.el. I have not enough
>> knowledge about vc to do it on my own, but I was enouraged by Eric
>> Raymond to do so. Unfortunately, he stopped to support me after a while,
>> so the work is stalled since then.
>
> Still, did you get to push this partial progress? 

Everything which I had done that time is pushed to the repo.

>> If somebody with more knowledge about vc than me would join that work, I
>> would be willing to continue. Could you help me with this? Other
>> volunteers?
>
> I'm not a user of vc, but let us know your questions, maybe I can help
> with some. Or maybe a vc user will jump in (this list is full of them ;
> -). Really, don't be afraid to ask.

Will do.

>> In parallel, it might be useful to work on Bug#19548. As Glenn said, the
>> documentation lacks the changes which have been applied last year.
>
> Documentation is certainly another good way to help.

In this case it is important, because the behaviour of the functions
differ sometimes from what is documented, and I'm uncertain whom to
believe when asserting the test results. For the time being I have
accepted most of the results (modulo some few obvious errors, which I
did fix in vc-*.el), but maybe the checks are too weak, and there are
still some problems in vc-*.el, which are uncovered by this strategy of
vc-tests.el.

Best regards, Michael.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Michael Albinus]

Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> writes:

>>> If somebody with more knowledge about vc than me would join that work, I
>>> would be willing to continue. Could you help me with this? Other
>>> volunteers?
>>
>> I'm not a user of vc, but let us know your questions, maybe I can help
>> with some. Or maybe a vc user will jump in (this list is full of them ;
>> -). Really, don't be afraid to ask.
>
> Will do.

Reality check: I've asked more than a week ago, no response. Nobody
feels responsible for vc. vc-tests.el keeps stalled, unfortunately.

Best regards, Michael.

You probably need a new maintainer for vc.el

[Eric S. Raymond]

Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>:
> Reality check: I've asked more than a week ago, no response. Nobody
> feels responsible for vc. vc-tests.el keeps stalled, unfortunately.

Sorry. I'd like to give this time.  I can't.

I have a full-time job fixing Network Time Protocol now. Yes, the Core
Infrastructure Initative is actually *paying money* for this, and as
the project tech lead I have my hands full.

Sigh.  It needs to be done, the security issues with NTP are *severe*.
And I'm the right guy to do it.  But it means my other projects are
going to be neglected for a while.

You probably need to find a VC maintainer with more bandwidth available.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Kelvin White]

In regards to testing, ERC has no tests at all so I will definitely
write those. As for vc... I am not sure if I can be of any help yet,
but I'm willing to give it a shot if you would like

On Sat, Nov 7, 2015 at 2:13 PM, Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote:
> Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> writes:
>
>>>> If somebody with more knowledge about vc than me would join that work, I
>>>> would be willing to continue. Could you help me with this? Other
>>>> volunteers?
>>>
>>> I'm not a user of vc, but let us know your questions, maybe I can help
>>> with some. Or maybe a vc user will jump in (this list is full of them ;
>>> -). Really, don't be afraid to ask.
>>
>> Will do.
>
> Reality check: I've asked more than a week ago, no response. Nobody
> feels responsible for vc. vc-tests.el keeps stalled, unfortunately.
>
> Best regards, Michael.
>
>

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Artur Malabarba]

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On 8 Nov 2015 1:06 am, "Kelvin White" <kwhite@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> In regards to testing, ERC has no tests at all so I will definitely
> write those. As for vc... I am not sure if I can be of any help yet,
> but I'm willing to give it a shot if you would like

If erc has no tests, I recommend starting there. But don't hesitate to go
where the code takes you. ;-)

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Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Michael Albinus]

Kelvin White <kwhite@gnu.org> writes:

Hi Kevin,

> As for vc... I am not sure if I can be of any help yet,
> but I'm willing to give it a shot if you would like

It would be great if you could review my questions I have sent in the
messages with subjects "vc-tests.el: ..." on Oct 30th.

TIA, and best regards, Michael.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Artur Malabarba]

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On 7 Nov 2015 7:13 pm, "Michael Albinus" <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote:
> >> -). Really, don't be afraid to ask.
> >
> > Will do.
>
> Reality check: I've asked more than a week ago, no response.

Indeed, thanks for trying. Still, it didn't hurt to ask.
In fact, this eventually led to Eric bringing up the fact that vc needs a
new maintainer, so something good came out of it after all.

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Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 11/08/2015 04:16 AM, Artur Malabarba wrote:

> In fact, this eventually led to Eric bringing up the fact that vc needs
> a new maintainer, so something good came out of it after all.

Eric hasn't been doing a lot of maintaining for quite a while.  See 'git 
log -- lisp/vc/'.

Also see lisp/vc/ in admin/MAINTAINERS.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 11/07/2015 09:13 PM, Michael Albinus wrote:

> Reality check: I've asked more than a week ago, no response. Nobody
> feels responsible for vc. vc-tests.el keeps stalled, unfortunately.

Sorry. I've marked all those thread as TODO, but didn't get around to 
them yet. Are any of these urgent? If yes, why?

It seems like they can easily wait until after the Emacs 25 release, or 
at the very least, until after the feature freeze.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Michael Albinus]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> Are any of these urgent? If yes, why?

Of course not. I've just taken the opportunity to ask.

> It seems like they can easily wait until after the Emacs 25 release,

This is months from now. And there are release critical bugs, see
Bug#19548, Bug#20637.

> or at the very least, until after the feature freeze.

Best regards, Michael.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 11/08/2015 10:41 AM, Michael Albinus wrote:

> This is months from now. And there are release critical bugs, see
> Bug#19548, Bug#20637.

If you know how to mark me responsible for these using our bug tracker, 
please do.

The documentation changes can certainly wait until after the freeze, IMHO.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Michael Albinus]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

>> This is months from now. And there are release critical bugs, see
>> Bug#19548, Bug#20637.
>
> If you know how to mark me responsible for these using our bug
> tracker, please do.

I've marked you as owner of both bugs.

Best regards, Michael.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 10/28/2015 09:20 PM, Michael Albinus wrote:

> Last year, I've started to write vc-tests.el. I have not enough
> knowledge about vc to do it on my own, but I was enouraged by Eric
> Raymond to do so. Unfortunately, he stopped to support me after a while,
> so the work is stalled since then.

I should be able to help, sometime. The tests already in place seem to 
work well enough, though, and we should strive to add more tests 
together with any bugfixes in VC that call for it.

Re: Which files suffer from a complete lack of tests?

[Michael Albinus]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> On 10/28/2015 09:20 PM, Michael Albinus wrote:
>
>> Last year, I've started to write vc-tests.el. I have not enough
>> knowledge about vc to do it on my own, but I was enouraged by Eric
>> Raymond to do so. Unfortunately, he stopped to support me after a while,
>> so the work is stalled since then.
>
> I should be able to help, sometime. The tests already in place seem to
> work well enough, though, and we should strive to add more tests
> together with any bugfixes in VC that call for it.

Thanks. Working on vc-tests.el has always been on my todo list since
then, but it got less priority over the time. I'll try to revive this
work.

Best regards, Michael.