[Zope3-dev] Request for ideas: making integration tests more useful as documentation

[Jim Fulton]

Hi,

In theory, a benefit of tests is that they are provide documentation.
With standard unit tests, I find that this is usually not the case.
I find doctest-based tests much more readable and that, with
doctest-based tests, it's possible to write tests that really serve
as documentation. This doesn't happen without trying, but at least
doctest makes it possible.

We have an integration-testing frameworl (we call this the functional
testing Framework, but Tres argues that this is an integration
testing framework) that is based on standard unit tests.  It would
be nice if we could find a way to make integration tests more useful
as documentation.  In particular, it would be great if we could
make it possible to write documentation using integration tests as
easily as we can write documentation using doctest.  I haven't
really given this a lot of throught yet.

Jim

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