I tried to distinguish between commiters and non-commiters. For
*commiters* we should get into the habit of using unit tests to
demonstrate problems since I believe we want to encourage this among
non-comitters as well (note several Apache and many open source
projects do this, including many of the Geronimo subprojects). I'm
not saying showing how to reproduce the problem using a sample is
somehow "inappropriate", I'm just asking that commiters adopt a
default of using unit tests since it helps the project. Of course,
there are times when this is not easy to do, but when it is (which
was the case in the examples I referred to) it seems like a logical
request to make. Also, please note I did not mean to imply that the
bug fixer is free of the responsibility to write testcases associated
with the fix (actually I would argue that if they must when checking
in the fix).
Do you have an issue with this approach? If so, could you please
outline what specific concerns you have?
Jim
On May 3, 2006, at 8:43 AM, ant elder wrote:
I'm not sure I completely agree with this, if you make it hard to
report
problems then people don't report them. A bug reporter should have to
describe/provide just enough of a way to easily recreate a problem,
its down
to the bug fixer to write whatever regression and unit tests are
required by
the fix. If you can describe how to demonstrate a bug just by
running one of
our samples that's fine in my book.
...ant
On 4/25/06, James F Marino <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I've noticed several issues have been logged against the Java
container where entire Maven projects or samples are used to
demonstrate a problem. Sometimes this may be unavoidable, but I
would
like to propose that we get into the habit of submitting failing
testcases as a default instead. This is common practice in many
projects, and my reasons for suggesting this are:
- it helps diagnose the problem
- it provides verification when the issue is resolved
- it builds up our test suite which is woefully inadequate
- it is often less work than creating entire projects
Obviously, this can't be a literal policy but I believe it should be
"default" behavior for those directly involved in the project. For
non-commiters, we could encourage this behavior by noting that logged
issues with testcases generally get attention quicker.
Also, I would like to propose that while we may tolerate an issue
logged with a project which requires a particular IDE such as
IntelliJ
or Eclipse, or requires "main" to run from those outside the project,
commiters should never do this.
Comments?
