Re: [dev] [sbase] [PATCH] uuencode base64 encoding/decoding and stdout output for uudecode

From: Dimitris Papastamos <sin_AT_2f30.org>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2015 09:52:02 +0000

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:41:08AM +0100, FRIGN wrote:
> I have a mixed opinion about test-environments. In my opinion, they
> become necessary when the developer can't grasp the complexity of his
> program and needs to check if certain vectors passed to his program
> result in the same output vector as expected in the standard.
> However, this doesn't assure deviations don't happen. It's much better
> to look at the code again and rewrite it in a shorter and concise way.

Yeah unit testing is useless. Testing overall program behaviour,
especially when the program is large (only valid candidate in sbase is
sed) is useful. Evan Gates has some sed scripts that he used to test
sed, we can just use those and run them every time we make an intrusive
change. I don't think there is a need to put them in a separate sbase-test
repo or anything like that.

The reason this is useful for sed is that it is large and complex enough
by nature. Regardless of how you rewrite it, it won't be easy to have the
innate confidence that it works correctly in all cases (or that it indeed
conforms to POSIX). This is something that we should attempt to achieve
at all times, but having some test scripts lying around won't hurt. The
sed games are also very good candidates.
Received on Fri Feb 13 2015 - 10:52:02 CET