> On Jan 15, 2017, at 4:49 PM, Jan Grashöfer <jan.grashoe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> In general I think, making test cases available for users of a package
> could be quite helpful. Further, I think we have also already mentioned
> the possibility of compatibility checking regarding the installed Bro
> version by executing tests. Thus I would propose introducing test_dir to
> bro-pkg.meta for tests and a test command to execute the tests for
> bro-pkg as a first step.

Yes, seems useful.  I’d do it like:

1) Add `bro-pkg test <package>` command.
2) Add “test_command” field to bro-pkg.meta

The “test_command” is more general than “test_dir" — the command could just `cd 
test_dir` if needed and there’s no other reason bro-pkg needs to know the dir 
where tests are stored, is there?

Other questions:

1) Is it fine for `bro-pkg test <package>` to operate on the installed version 
of the package or are there expectations of testing a package in an isolated 
sandbox without installing it?  I think the former is more useful since it may 
catch odd inter-package conflicts that wouldn’t show up when testing in 
isolation.

2) Should we put btest on PyPi, add it as a dependency to bro-pkg, and make it 
the canonical testing framework for packages?  This gives devs a 
straightforward way to proceed w/ writing tests and guarantees that bro-pkg 
users always have the ability to run them.

(There is a “btest” package on PyPi, but not the one we know, so not sure how 
to resolve that...)

> Another thing that would be great to have for packages would be
> documentation. I've experimented with the broxygen feature but the doc
> about generating docs is not that exhaustive ;) I think providing an
> easy-to-use mechanism to generate documentation for thrid-party scripts
> would be great. Ideally the generated documentation would link to Bro's
> online doc for built-in types and scripts.

If the problem is that there’s a lack of examples/templates for generating 
script API docs via broxygen or that it simply doesn’t work at the moment, then 
yes, that’s something to fix.

But regarding the direction of autogenerated package docs in general, maybe it 
makes sense to work on that in conjunction with a web-frontend for package 
sources (e.g. a package repository browser).  A package would be able to 
generate its docs independent of that, but if the web-frontend is going to 
become a go-to place for looking at package info/stats/docs and it takes care 
of creating all that without package authors having to do anything, then that 
seems like the superior/common use-case.

- Jon

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