From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: ert.el --- Emacs Lisp Regression Testing Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:42:51 -0500 Message-ID: References: <47782302.5000201@fastmail.net> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1199112314 19809 80.91.229.12 (31 Dec 2007 14:45:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:45:14 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Christian Ohler Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Dec 31 15:45:28 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1J9LtN-0000wr-FG for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 31 Dec 2007 15:45:25 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1J9Lt1-0007FK-SP for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:45:03 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1J9Lqw-0005b0-CS for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:42:54 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1J9Lqu-0005a2-JV for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:42:53 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1J9Lqu-0005Zk-7c for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:42:52 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1J9Lqu-0001OD-1d for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:42:52 -0500 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1J9Lqt-0007Q8-GH; Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:42:51 -0500 In-reply-to: <47782302.5000201@fastmail.net> (message from Christian Ohler on Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:00:18 +0100) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:85739 Archived-At: ert.el looks very useful. Would you like to contribute it to Emacs? One of the things that has held us back from setting up a test suite in the past is that only a minority of Emacs bugs concern Lisp progrmming. Most Emacs bugs involve keyboard commands and/or redisplay. It occurs to me that M-x term could be used to test for redisplay. The idea is that you run a sub-Emacs, send it commands, and check what it displayed (because what it displayed is now in a buffer). It would be terribly slow to do this starting a new sub-Emacs for each test. So the test framework ought to be designed to do many such tests with the same sub-Emacs, clearing out whatever is necessary each time. I think that an extension to ert.el, for sub-Emacs testing, might make it easy to define those tests, much as ert.el makes it easy to define tests of Lisp execution. Interested?