From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: burden of maintainance Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2015 12:25:18 +0100 Message-ID: <87si5t1pi9.fsf@russet.org.uk> References: <560CEA6A.9000907@online.de> <560D60A1.4090909@cumego.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1443788349 9969 80.91.229.3 (2 Oct 2015 12:19:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2015 12:19:09 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: =?utf-8?Q?Przemys=C5=82aw?= Wojnowski Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Oct 02 14:19:04 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZhzIh-0008W0-Jw for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 02 Oct 2015 14:18:59 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:58976 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZhzIh-0000Zs-0X for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 02 Oct 2015 08:18:59 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:36340) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZhySs-0005l9-NO for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 02 Oct 2015 07:25:27 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZhySo-0003Zf-Kn for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 02 Oct 2015 07:25:26 -0400 Original-Received: from cheviot22.ncl.ac.uk ([128.240.234.22]:57377) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZhySo-0003XA-Fj for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 02 Oct 2015 07:25:22 -0400 Original-Received: from smtpauth-vm.ncl.ac.uk ([10.8.233.129] helo=smtpauth.ncl.ac.uk) by cheviot22.ncl.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1ZhySl-0007kc-DA; Fri, 02 Oct 2015 12:25:19 +0100 Original-Received: from jangai.ncl.ac.uk ([10.66.67.223] helo=localhost) by smtpauth.ncl.ac.uk with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES128-SHA:128) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1ZhySk-0003uD-Nf; Fri, 02 Oct 2015 12:25:18 +0100 In-Reply-To: <560D60A1.4090909@cumego.com> (=?utf-8?Q?=22Przemys=C5=82aw?= Wojnowski"'s message of "Thu, 1 Oct 2015 18:34:41 +0200") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 128.240.234.22 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:190675 Archived-At: Przemys=C5=82aw Wojnowski writes: >> as the burden of maintainance was mentioned: from reading the >> bug-reports got the impression, a more strict test-regime might reduce >> that. >> >> If a bug shows up, the first question should be: how it could survive >> the tests? > > +1 > > In previous project I joined a team that couldn't do any release in 4 > years. I've introduced automated tests and refactoring among other > things and after 2 years we were releasing 4 times a year, with 3 times > less defects, found much sooner in release cycle and they were easier > to fix. > > Some people here work in academia so maybe don't have such experiences, > but in software industry automated tests are a standard. Projects > without (or with weak) tests are replaced with those having strong > tests. Well some of us work in academia and still have this experience anyway, which is why I write tests for most of my own Emacs packages. WRT Emacs, I think, that testing would be a good thing but there are a couple of hurdles to overcome. First, most of Emacs doesn't have tests, simply because it predates widespread use of testing. Secondly, Emacs use of global state (current-buffer!) can make testing quite difficult; combined with the reality that some of the functions are pretty large, and will be difficult to retrofit tests onto, I think this is quite an issue. And, thirdly, testing of interactive programs is difficult anyway; the difficulty of writing tests in this environment is much higher, and the payback lower.=20 We can have more than one maintainer. Someone who wanted to just concentrate on getting a nightly build infrastructure running, with email to emacs-diffs, and then starting to add fixtures and some other frameworks to ert would be valuable addition to the process. Phil