[development] Drupal & automated testing

[Kieran Lal]

On Mar 6, 2006, at 9:33 AM, Tao Starbow wrote:

>
> Skilled users could submit tests that expose the bug as part of the  
> original issue submission.  And submitting original tests could be  
> a great way for new users to contribute.

My first full-time programming job was maintaining unit and  
regression tests for 1M+ C++ line code base with over 20 different  
types of software services for medical records.  If something slipped  
through people could get the wrong diagnosis or the wrong  
medication.  I agree, unit test are valuable.  However, maintaining  
unit tests could be as difficult as building core itself initially.

Maintaining unit tests attracts a different kind of personality type  
than people who are interested in adding new features.  We need a way  
to appeal to the motivations of testers.  I think coming up with a  
small number of tests maintained by a few people is the way to  
approach this.

We just had a fun chat in #drupal about what the most basic tests for  
Drupal core should be.

1) Test checkboxes -apparently they were broken some 41 times in head
2) Changing Filter input to PHP type for security
3) Page edit
4) Bootstrap checking
5) Update.php checking

I think a grand scheme to write hundreds of tests or force core  
contributors to write unit tests with their patches will fail. Worse  
it could delay emerging efforts for a small suite of maintained  
tests.  If anyone is interested in maintaining at least one test over  
the 4.7 release cycle let's get together and see if we can provide a  
useful maintained suite that can be run against head to identify  
issues and provide core developers a toolset to improve the quality  
of their patches.

Cheers,
Kieran

> -- 
> Tao Starbow
> Web Architect, CITRIS
>
>