On Mon, 20 May 2002, Alan Millar wrote:
On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 10:14:59AM -0400, Pat Eyler wrote:
To encourage code cleanliness, I feel that we need to encourage the development of tests and documentation. Liberally seeding the codebase will make a good start. Encouraging the addition of tests for new features before checkin (indeed, the successful passing of the complete testsuite before checkin) will also be a great help.
Sounds like a great idea. How do we start? Does anyone have pointers on where to read up on writing testing code?
One good place to start looking is at the Test::Harness and Test::More docs (you can also look at the tests I've started to write testKoha.pl and t/*.t). For more info about the idea, I'd look at <www.extremeprogramming.org> and <www.refactoring.com>. <www.rubygarden.org/ruby?UsingTestUnit> is also a good read. If these aren't enough, I'll happily spen time in irc or email with ppl.
I see how Perl CPAN modules go through tests on install, but I don't have any idea how they do it.
I'd love to see us come up with some automated install/upgrade software. I *love* the Koha database updater that figures out what tables and columns need to be added; it's a great start. Along similar lines, I recently installed the Linux terminal server software LTSP 3.0 from ltsp.org. I was impressed that it is not a bunch of new software, but rather a tool to configure all the existing software on your system to have the correct settings. That may give us some inspiriation (configuring Apache for OPAC, etc.)
Mike and Nick have started installer.pl. My hope is that we can start small, get it to do some simple bits, and then start adding functionality (testing as we go). happy hacking, -pate
- Alan