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

[Michael Gratton]

On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 07:55 -0700, C. Titus Brown wrote:
> 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.

Sure, but in such a case you would need to obtain a source distribution
anyway - if only to recompile any native code (or bindings to native
code) it might contain or to produce a egg for that platform.

>   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.

Yes, see above.

End users use binary distributions and don't use or care about tests.
Developers, porters and packagers use source distributions and do care
about tests. So, ship them with your source, but don't bother with your
binaries.

Or, to look at it another way, if your users need to run your tests, you
(or your linux distro) have already shipped a broken binary.

Mozilla has a large suite of test cases. Do you wish they shipped those
so you could run them every time you download Firefox? If they did,
would you?

/Mike

-- 
Michael Gratton <michael at quuxo.com>     
Quuxo Software <http://web.quuxo.com/>
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