-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Jun 28, 2007, at 4:04 PM, Chris McDonough wrote:
> I've historically not been a huge fan of doctests because (these > things may have changed since last I used doctest in anger): I used to think the same thing, but I've gotten the doctest religion. I'm using them almost exclusively in the new Mailman code, and we use them at work (though both still have traditional Python unit tests). The thing that convinced me was the realization (assisted by my colleagues) that doctests are first and foremost documentation. They are testable documentation sure, but the unit tests are secondary. There's no question that for things like system documentation, the narrative that weaves the testable bits together in a well written doctest are much more valuable than the tests. Most unittest based tests have little or no comments, and nothing approaching the narrative in a good doctest, so it's clear that unittests are tests first and probably not documentation at all. I've even experimented with writing a PEP for my enum package (as yet unsubmitted) that is nothing more than a doctest. It seemed almost completely natural. A good test suite can benefit from both doctests and unittests and I don't think unittest will ever go away (nor should it), but in my latest work I'm opting more and more for doctests. That Tim Peters is a smart guy after all I guess. :) - -Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) iQCVAwUBRoSAfnEjvBPtnXfVAQLSrQP/criiWjS2RdChwq5CVw1BbYbS5LP8WI7b 4SY6BRLFFWH218IrihVa8kZh8cvrTb1PHxVqiuEQIj3qcHo3SuMO6A1MKYZJhuCN vOINQkseaP1jGn5/b85/Q3OSUGbVfdWS+E7Yri5qCva/GaTNwCNNHNTT9+K7LBqE 7AA937O2oa8= =97lr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
