Really, I want to be good and write my tests together with the code. I still don't do it often enough but I know it's important and for the code I'm currently working on I try to cover most of it with tests.
I regret that I'm not able to get down into the guts of the Java code and help fix it, so, instead I moan ;-)
No, seriously, here are a few more general things that bug me about the Unit module.
- assertions causing an NPE when an XQuery error is raised but no traceback that tells me what/where the error actually is. [ex1]
- assertions causing a failure/error reported, produce a test result but stop running further tests after the one that raises the error [ex2]
I tried to reduce these issues into a short example but I think that they highlight a more general issue with the current Unit module.
It's mainly the fact that there's no indication of the problem that forces me to add unit:ignore to all tests and one by one removing it, or executing the assertion xquery in a client to find out where the issue lies.
I also have an improvement idea:
- Personally, I run the tests often (minutes rather than hours), and from the shell. The XML format feedback isn't very helpful. It would be for automated test reports but I think the usability (readability) of the feedback during development is just as, if not more, important. Maybe adding an extra switch (-t for textual feedback and -tx for XML feedback) could help. It should just focus on summarizing clearly the expected, return values, failures and errors, and provide helpful context.
Note that I always run the code using `basex -t` from bash and I'm running 8.0 beta 7ba9510
Note too that most of these things happen to me when doing map related stuff.
... and now I stop moaning and get back to coding.
--Marc
[ex1] example of test that causes an NPE without any helpful output
*declare* *%unit:test* *function* *test:npe*() { *unit:assert-equals*(*map* {}('x'), *map* { 'x': 1 }('x')) }; [ex2] example of test that causes further tests to be executed
*declare* *%unit:test* *function* *test:fail*() { *unit:assert-equals*(*map* {}, *map* { 'x': 1 }) };
doing
map {} = map {'x': 1} causes this error
[XPTY0004] map(*) and map(*) cannot be compared.