[TIP] why you should distribute tests with your application / module

[C. Titus Brown]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 09:59:15AM +1000, Michael Gratton wrote:
-> However there is no point if you're shipping a "binary" distribution.
-> While this seems an odd distinction to make for Python programs,
-> distributing it as eggs, in deb/rpms or compiled to an exe effectively
-> are binary. In these scenarios people who download them clearly aren't
-> interested in modifying them, so including the tests here is pointless.

Tests are also useful to see if programs run on other platforms, and
they can give the developer debugging feedback that they can't obtain
otherwise.  For example, I do most of my development on Linux, and with
good test coverage I can run my tests on Windows and Mac OS X to see if
things break.  Even if I didn't have access to those platforms as a
developer, someone who *does* could run my tests and see if things
worked.

In the case of binaries, this is important for different versions of the
OS, different library installs, etc.

--titus
-- 
C. Titus Brown, ctb at msu.edu