[Zope-Coders] Help with Unit Testing

[Chris Withers]

Shane Hathaway wrote:
> Chris Withers wrote:
> 
>> Tres Seaver wrote:
>>  > +#
>>  > +# XXX: 2002/08/12  Generic rule:  *don't* do imports of the 
>> module-under-test
>>  > +#       at module scope in the unittest;  failure here suppresses 
>> information!
>>  > +#
>>  >  from Products.CMFCore.DirectoryView import registerDirectory
>>  >  from Products.CMFCore.DirectoryView import addDirectoryViews
>>  >  from Products.CMFCore.DirectoryView import DirectoryViewSurrogate
>>
>> Not sure I follow you here. This pattern is used all over the place. I 
>> can see
>> what you're driving at but I'm not sure why these tests were picked 
>> out as an
>> example? Should we change tests like these everywhere? will we? ;-)
> 
> 
> It's a new pattern that seems logical.  Your tests were picked out only 
> because they are new. :-)  There are other patterns known to be bad in 
> unit tests (like "assert" statements), but we haven't taken the time to 
> clean up older tests, partly because we're not sure we've discovered all 
> the right patterns yet.

So where should these imports be included now?

>>  > +#       and it should be possible to run them *anywhere*, 
>> including in
>>  > +#       a setup where the files / directories are readonly.
>>
>> ..I don't think it's possible for this to be the case. Lots of the 
>> Zope tests
>> (ZCatalog indexes, ZODB, etc) write to files.
> 
> Do they?  If you import the "Testing" package before importing "Zope", 
> Zope.app() gives you a DemoStorage instead of a FileStorage.

Well, maybe someone can explain all the StorageErrors I get with the Windows 
test runner then? ;-)

However, no-one has addressed the real problem yet, I'm afraid :-(
DirectoryViews, are, unfortunately predictated on the filesystem. They need to 
be tested, and the only way I can think of to do this is to modify files on the 
filesystem.

Until someone can suggest a better way, I propose that this form of testing 
remains as it is.

Anyone got any suggestions?

cheers,

Chris