Jim Fulton wrote:
Martijn Faassen wrote:
Jim Fulton wrote:
[snip]
The idea is that after applying configuration, you'd keep the
resolved sequence of actions around so that you could call their undo
methods later.
Yes, that's what I was thinking of too. Good. :)
[snip]
I was talking to Philipp last night about providing an equivalent API
that looks exactly like ZCML but is in Python. The motivation was that
this would help in making testing easier - if you want to accomplish
the equivalent effect of ZCML, you would write Python code that's the
same. My idea however was that it would execute the actions
immediately, which is different from actually generating actions as
you suggest here.
I'll note that we typically write 3 kinds of tests:
1, Unit tests. For these we go out of our way to avoid
configuration. We make agressive use of skaffolding, if
necessary, to avoid dependence on other systems.
2, Component functional tests. These are tests of a package
using the default configuration use by the package. This
allows us to test things like configuration and UI without
depending on a particular application. This was the primary
motivation for layers in the new test runner.
3. System tests, in which we test a very specific configured
application.
For 1, we don't need configuration support. For 2 and 3 it's
important to use exactly the ZCML provided by the package or
by the application respectively. Fly what you test, and test what
you fly. If you use ZCML for configurating, use it for functional
and system tests.
Agreed. However...
For 1. we don't need configuration support, but what I think could be
improved is the skaffolding. Often in unit tests we do register
something with the component architecture. Right now we need to know two
systems whenever we write code that needs unit tests:
* ZCML for when the code needs to actually run
* component architecture APIs when we need to set up some stuff to
support our tests.
What I'm suggesting is having a Python API that looks much like ZCML but
does the component architecture registration bit of what ZCML does. Less
things to learn for the person writing (or reading) the scaffolding for
the tests.
Since we also were talking about a Python API to generate ZCML actions,
it seems to make sense that the same API could also have an
implementation that *does* generate actions.
I'd have no problem with generating actions in Python. It would allow
greater control and would probably make action generation much faster.
If we did this, We'd probably want to improve the action-generation
API. We'd also need to think about how action info should be
generated, especially wrt error reporting.
Perhaps we should support both ZCML and python action generation.
I think that this would be a useful direction to go towards, if only
to make writing tests easier (only one API to learn instead of the
underlying APIs that are used by ZCML).
I strongly oppose and discourage using a separate API for tests, for
the reasons given above.
The main reasons, IMO, for providing a Python API are:
- Provide greater control for those who want it.
For example, to allow more abstract configuration tools,
avoid "repetition", etc.
- Provide an alternative for people who just can't stand pointy
brackets. (Who can blame them? ;)
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think you might not have understood my reasons
for wanting ZCML-similar API for unit tests. I absolutely agree that for
functional tests, the same configuration should be used as when the code
actually runs. I wasn't talking about that however - I hope I explained
more clearly now why this might be a good idea for *unit* tests, where
effectively a separate API is already being used to set up the various
components (skaffolding). If we are to present a Python-style API for
ZCML anyway, reusing it (with a different implementation) seems like
low-hanging consistency fruit.
Regards,
Martijn
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