[Python-Dev] Unit testing (again)
Jeremy Hylton
jeremy@alum.mit.edu
Mon, 12 Feb 2001 22:15:30 -0500 (EST)
>>>>> "FL" == Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@effbot.org> writes:
FL> Jeremy wrote:
>> I know that Quixote uses test cases in strings, but it's the
>> thing I like the least about Quixote unittest
FL> like whitespace indentation, it's done that way for a reason.
Whitespace indentation is natural and makes code easier to read.
Putting little snippets of Python code in string literals passed to
exec has the opposite effect.
doctest is a nice middle ground, because the code snippets are in a
natural setting -- an interactive interpreter setting.
>> I'm not sure how to achieve this or why you would want the test
>> to continue.
FL> same reason you want your compiler to report more than just the
FL> first error -- so you can see patterns in the test script's
FL> behaviour, so you can fix more than one bug at a time, or fix
FL> the bugs in an order that suits you and not the framework, etc.
Python's compiler only reports one syntax error for a source file,
regardless of how many it finds <0.5 wink>.
>> After the first exception, something is broken and needs to be
>> fixed, regardless of whether subsequent lines of code work.
FL> jeremy, that's the kind of comment I would have expected from a
FL> manager, not from a programmer who has done lots of testing.
I don't think there's any reason to be snide.
The question is one of granularity: At what level of granularity
should the test framework catch exceptions and continue? I'm
satisfied with the unit of testing being a method.
Jeremy