[Zope3-dev] Re: The bug fixing problem
Christian Theune
ct at gocept.com
Fri Jul 7 07:52:29 EDT 2006
Hi,
Jim Fulton wrote:
>
> On Jul 6, 2006, at 12:29 PM, Philipp von Weitershausen wrote:
>
>> dieter at handshake.de wrote:
>>> Christian Theune wrote at 2006-7-5 11:46 +0200:
>>>> ...
>>>> Another thing are the rules about unit tests. Some bugs touch areas
>>>> that
>>>> are poorly tested. When I fix a bug over there, do I have to work
>>>> harder
>>>> to introduce the fix because I have to start introducing tests?
>>>> We should find and announce a reasonable answer for the procedure in
>>>> this case.
>>>
>>> Although I have (so far) never fixed a bug in Zope 3 (but posted
>>> several patches for Zope 2), I can confirm this:
>>>
>>> There are bugs that do not need a test once they are fixed.
>>> All kinds of "NameError" and "AttributeError" fall into this
>>> category.
>>>
>>> Requiring to write a unit test for these or similarly trivial
>>> bugs is silly -- especially if there is not yet a testing file
>>> for the module (such that a trivial test would suffice).
>>
>> I disagree. How would you make sure that your fix for even a "trivial"
>> NameError actually works? Perhaps you introduced another typo in the
>> bugfix? Or perhaps another problem pops up in the same codepath.
>> Clearly, since the NameError didn't occur in any other tests, the
>> codepath hasn't been tested yet, so it should be no matter what.
>>
>> There's another aspect to tests for bugs: reproduceability. Especially
>> when fixing bugs I tend to write tests first in order to be absolutely
>> sure that I can reproduce the problem in an automated manner. Then
>> fixing the bug is "easy": Just make the test pass...
>
> Well said. I agree 100%
Just to make sure nobody got me wrong: I'm not arguing that tests are a
bad thing. They belong to the best thing that came up in the last years. :)
I was merely pointing to a small edge-case in bugfixing, that might be
even smaller then anticipated, where I got frustrated in the last time.
+1 for the tests-are-good-recap :)
Christian
--
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