[Rubygems-developers] RubyGems Alpha II?

[Chad Fowler]

Hi.  I'm rushing between meetings, so I'll just say that all of the 
responses to this thread have been great and will send more of an update 
later.  Inlined comments on this part below:

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, Jim Weirich wrote:

# 
# Mauricio Fernández said:
# > Not a feature but something I think would be good to consider before a
# > release: testing.
# >
# > After a cvs update -dPR, this is what I'm getting when running
# > test_all.rb:
# >
# > 52 tests, 49 assertions, 2 failures, 3 errors
# 

I absolutely agree with Mauricio on this.  I prefer test-first, but we 
haven't been doing a great job of that since RubyConf.  I actually wanted 
to open this topic for discussion but have been travelling too much.


# Wow, that's more tests than when I looked last time.  Someone has been busy!
# 

:) Very modest start, but I have been trying.

# But I agree with Batsman, a carefully designed suite of unit tests will
# help use in the long run as code is changing.  But we need a good
# commitment from the developers to keep the unit tests up to date and
# current.
# 
# Some test issues.  Currently, the tests do not do a good job of separating
# the installed code from the code in the working directory.  Ideally, the
# unit tests should work only on the code in the working directory.  I just
# tried the tests and got the 2 failures/3 errors listed above.  Then I
# installed the working directory code and errors went down to 1 (apparently
# expected) failure.  This tells me we are testing the installed stuff.
# 
# We can correct that through careful use of the -I directive when you start
# the tests.

I've been using -I.  My rake is in a state of flux, because I've been 
using it to experiment with the application installation functionality.  
That's why I haven't been using the Rake functionality like I should.  
When I'm in one place for a while, I'll make sure I use Rake correctly.  I 
agree with your comment below that test_all.rb shouldn't even be 
necessary, assuming Rake is insatlled.  I would actually be in favor 
(without giving it much thought) of making gem -Ri rake be part of 
install.rb's job (optionally).  Thoughts?

# 
# Another issue.  There is a test target in the provided rake file.  Just
# type "rake" and it will automatically run the unit tests.  However, it
# looks for files beginning with "test_" in the test directory, so the
# "test_all" file gets run as well.  Changing that the name of that file to
# something like "run_all_tests.rb" will fix that (but then again, you
# really don't need test_all.rb if you use rake ... you do have rake don't
# you? ... hint: gem -Ri rake :-)
# 
# And one last issue.  Unit tests are well and good, but even XP recommends
# a functional level of testing.  At this level you would actually run the
# code from the command line a making sure things installed correctly or the
# proper listing was made.  Kind of an end-to-end test of the entire
# program.  I was thinking about using the Ara's session module to do some
# command line testing at this level.  Any opinions?  Does anyone else feel
# this is worthwhile?
# 
# 

I very much feel like it's worthwhile.  I'm specifically interested in 
your opinions (Jim and Mauricio in particular) in how to test some of the 
stuff that is currently hard to test.  For example, George's patch has 
really improved the remote-install code, but at the same time has made it 
slightly more hairy to mock out.  So, our remote_install.rb tests right 
now are quite outdated.  

I'm in favor of following Gavin's suggestion of freezing features and 
focusing on cleaning and documentation.  Part of this would/could 
obviously be getting our testing act together.  Once we've got a solid 
suite of tests, it will be easier for us to keep it current...the ole 
"Broken Windows" effect in play.

I'm not convinced that we should wait as long as 3 or 4 weeks for Alpha 
II.  I think with a project like this we need to tighten the feedback loop 
with the community as much as possible.  We really need to take 
the "release early--release often" mantra to heart if we want to get the 
mindshare that it will take for this to become *the* way to package 
ruby libraries.  We all know Ruby needs that.

I like Simon's patch for what it is, but I'm still a little skeptical 
about "require" modifying the load path.  Any other strong opinions?  Mine 
isn't strong.

Chad