On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Gregory Jefferis <jeffe...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 2009-01-19 01:42, "Christiaan Hofman" <cmhof...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> On 19 Jan 2009, at 2:20 AM, Gregory Jefferis wrote: >> >>> On 2009-01-19 00:39, "Adam R. Maxwell" <amaxw...@mac.com> wrote: >>> >> I don't think that's possible, but I don't know too much about unit >> tests. I'd rather say that the tests should be designed to be >> independent of the prefs. > Yes and no. I think that there could be sensible reasons to want to test > the effect of a preference on program behaviour.
This is possible- you can remove the application domain prefs (the ones the user sets) from NSUserDefaults: [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] removePersistentDomainForName:@"edu.ucsd.cs.mmccrack.bibdesk"] this is probably a good idea to do - so the tests are always testing the same thing, and if we need to test the effects of a pref, you just set it in the test. >> That would be wrong, as there is no "right" in this case, that's why >> it fails. This particular pref is not even guaranteed to be the only >> one affecting bibtex generation. In fact, it isn't, and moreover: we >> can't know, because it may change in the future, nobody knows what the >> prefs will be. > > I think my point would be that if we change code or default prefs in the > future that alters the bibtex representation then we should spot that and > either change the test or change the code/pref. I think it is better to > start with a test that is on the fragile side and then gets refined than > with a test that is so robust that it never breaks! > >> The problem with these particular tests is that they test the wrong >> thing. They are supposed to test the string parsing, but they test as >> much the bibtex generation. > > Yes you're quite right. Thanks. > >> And in that respect they make assumptions >> that are baseless, and may well be wrong (in fact, in this case they >> are wrong). > > But I'm not so sure that checking the bibtex representation is a stupid > thing to do at all. This was just a silly place to do it. Rather any test > that directly has to do with the bibtex representation would be better off > happening just once in eg TestBibItem. > >> For this particular test it would be better to check the pubFields of >> the item rather than the bibtex. > > Done. But I have also put a test of bibtex minimal representation into > TestBibItem (ignoring tabs and newlines). Thanks for sticking with this. Adding tests to existing code is a multi-step process, but I'm sure they're going to be very useful. -mike > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > This SF.net email is sponsored by: > SourcForge Community > SourceForge wants to tell your story. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword > _______________________________________________ > Bibdesk-develop mailing list > Bibdesk-develop@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-develop > -- Michael McCracken UCSD CSE PhD Candidate research: http://www.cse.ucsd.edu/~mmccrack/ misc: http://michael-mccracken.net/wp/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword _______________________________________________ Bibdesk-develop mailing list Bibdesk-develop@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-develop
