[Tutor] Introductory questions on test-driven development and implementing Git version control.

[boB Stepp]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 3:00 PM, Laura Creighton <lac at openend.se> wrote:
> In a message of Fri, 24 Apr 2015 14:09:45 -0500, boB Stepp writes:

> You need the testing-in-python mailing list.  Come on over ...
> http://lists.idyll.org/listinfo/testing-in-python
> You will find lots of familiar faces (email addresses) from this
> list there.  Nose and py.test are very similar.  I happen to like
> them better than unittest, but if you cannot install software on
> your solaris machines, you may be better off with unittest which
> comes with Python, which I assume you do have on your Solaris boxes.

I have joined!

The Python versions at work are 2.4.4 and 2.6.4(?)(Not certain about
the last digit there.) Based on responses to date, the fact that
unittest is in the standard library and that because of this most of
my books have something about unittest, I will probably start there. I
imagine that everything I learn with unittest will transfer over to
other testing frameworks.

>>And as to automated testing: I really, ..., really would like to
>>implement it on my side projects at work. But all such programs start
>>in a proprietary scripting environment, which can call external Python
>>(or other languages) scripts. The resulting final program is almost
>>always an unavoidable amount of propriety scripting language (Which I
>>always strive to minimize the amount of.), Solaris shell
>>commands/scripts and Python. As I have been learning more Python and
>>implementing it at work, I have found that the most successful
>>approach seems to be to first get all of the information I need out of
>>the CSA (commercial software environment) upfront, save it in temp
>>files, then call a Python script to start the heavy duty processing,
>>do everything possible in Python, generate a "reload" script file that
>>contains language the CSA understands, and finally run that inside the
>>CSA. How do I go about automating the testing of something like this?
>>And apply TDD write tests first principles?
>
> You need the testing-in-python mailing list.  Whatever proprietary
> thing you have  to integrate with, chances are somebody there has
> been there, and done that already and has code you would be
> welcome to use.

When I get farther along, I will probably have some very specific
questions on this that I will post there. Steven and Alan have given
me some very good feedback already! But if someone has already solved
my problem, or, something very similar, then that will be great!

>>And I would like to have all of that under version control, too. But
>>while I am allowed to write my own programs for this CSA, I am not
>>allowed to install anything else, strange as this may sound! Since the
>>only functional editors in these bare-bones Solaris 10 environments
>>are some simplistic default editor that I do not know the name of and
>>vi, I long ago gravitated to doing my actual coding on my Windows PC
>>(Being careful to save things with Unix line endings.) and FTPing to
>>the environments where these programs will actually run. I AM allowed
>>to install anything I want (within reason)on my PC. So I am thinking
>>install and use Git there?
>
> Are you absolutely certain that you cannot install git on your bare-bones
> Solaris 10 environments?  Or plug in a memory stick and run code from
> there?  Because it would make your life so much easier ...

I think that I can get an exception here (See a post in response that
I made earlier today.). What I am *certain* of, is that I cannot
install anything on our clinical planning environment. The Solaris
workstation that I now have all to myself--I'm thinking they will now
let me do what I want with it. But I must double check... But anything
I develop there *should* work in the clinical environment. The
planning software is the same though that may change soon as there are
plans to go up a version and they may not want to do that on my
testing/development machine.

Thanks!

-- 
boB