[TIP] Ideology

[Ned Batchelder]

Douglas Philips wrote:
> On or about 2009 Apr 22, at 9:45 AM, Ned Batchelder indited:
>   
>
>> more complex.  The natural impulse is to factor common complexity  
>> out of
>> the tests into something else.  That other thing is the test  
>> framework.
>>     
>
> Maybe, or maybe just some intermediate places. It depends on how you  
> define 'framework.' In my case, we have a customized version of  
> unittest where the most general abstractions live, but then we also  
> have other layers of TestCase subclasses which only apply to certain  
> kinds of tests. I would not classify those intermediate subclasses as  
> part of the framework since they aren't general enough. Just saying  
> that isn't so black and white and "in the test or in the framework." :)
>
>   
You are right, and I was confused by the terminology in this thread 
too.  My interpretation is that we are talking here about complexity in 
the project-specific code common to all tests.  Titus called that his 
"test runner" in the original post, and others morphed it into "test 
framework", but it all only makes sense if we take it to mean the code 
in the project to support the tests.  Not the tests themselves, and not 
a third party test framework like unittest, py.test or nose.  Your 
"intermediate place" is the place that we're all talking about. I think!

>> Then you don't have to maintain it, but you still get to benefit  
>> from its power.
>>     
>
> There is lots of power in nose and py.test that I. do. not. need. I do  
> not benefit from it. I am hurt by it, and thus I have, to date, chosen  
> not to use it. The ROI is way too low. Can't speak for Titus.
>
>   
Maybe you could give us an example of complexity in nose (to pick a 
concrete example) that you didn't need, and how it hurt you for nose to 
have it?  We tool builders often assume that it's OK to add features so 
long as they can be ignored by those that don't need them.
> -Doug
>
>   
--Ned.

-- 
Ned Batchelder, http://nedbatchelder.com

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