Re: call for more ert tests

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> I think the bar to contributing to Emacs is high enough as it is without
>> adding further requirements.
>
> I don't know why you are saying this.  Please elaborate by comparing
> with other projects whose bar is significantly lower.

You want names of projects that have a lower bar for contributions?  Or
what it is that makes the bar higher for Emacs than with these other
projects?

1) The Linux kernel.  2) Both the Emacs Lisp language and the
sorta-kinda C layer are novel ideas for most novices; the copyright
assignment paperwork; the unfamiliar VC; the many unfamiliar concepts
that Emacs has compared to most other projects (buffers, encodings); the
interaction between the Lisp bits and the C bits; the way the C bits
aren't compiled with -Wall, so you get little help from the compiler...
You may be used to all the Emacs internals, but poking around in Emacs
is pretty daunting compared to simple stuff like the Linux kernel.

> 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.

None of us have unlimited time to spend on this stuff, and what doesn't
help us doesn't help us, no matter what the current orthodoxies
surrounding testing says.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  bloggy blog http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/