Re: call for more ert tests

[Sebastian Wiesner <lunaryorn@gmail.com>]

2013/6/25 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> In fact, I believe that only an appearance of a very dedicated person
>> who would do the job is the only alternative to a strict policy of
>> requiring tests with each changeset.  How probable is that such an
>> alternative materializes any time soon, in your opinion?
>
> Unlikely, and I don't favour a huge set of automated tests, anyway, so
> I'm happy about that.
>
> If I decide that shr should render <li> differently than I originally
> thought it should, I'm very happy that I don't have a slew of unit tests
> for the HTML rendering.  Because then I'm done after changing the <li>
> rendering, and I don't have to touch up however many ert tests that this
> affects.

Actually, you aren't done… you are just out-sourcing your work, i.e.
regression testing, to your users.  In the absence of tests, you will
never realize that your quick change of "li" rendering accidentally
broke "a" rendering until the first user complains and sends you back
to the keyboard in order to debug the bug which you introduced.

Of couse, to you as a developer it's easier to just use your users as
testers, but that's probably not fair.  I as a user of your package
wouldn't like it… which is why I write tests for my own Elisp
packages.