On 4/28/2013 8:15 PM, Dick Hollenbeck wrote: > > On Apr 28, 2013 10:54 AM, "Brian Sidebotham" <brian.sidebot...@gmail.com > <mailto:brian.sidebot...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> Hi Guys, >> >> I'm just catching up with the list, and I saw something that caught my > eye as it's something that's been on my mind for a while: >> >> -------------------------- >> >> Dick Hollenbeck wrote: >> >> - Right now, I am finding too many bugs in the software ... >> >> - We might do well as a team by slowing down and focusing >> - on reliability and quality not features for awhile. Firstly, >> - the bugs are damaging to the project. >> >> --------------------------- >> >> I agree with this, there are things I'd like to add to KiCad, but only > on-top of something I can be confident I'm not breaking, especially by > creating corner case issues. >> >> I would like us to think about regression testing using something like > CTest (Which would make sense as we're currently using CMake anyway!). > We could then publish dashboard regression testing results. >> >> I'm aware work is going into making eeschema and PCBNEW essentially > into DLL's, so perhaps it's best to wait until that work is complete > before starting down this road? >> >> In particular I'd like to see regression testing on the DRC, Gerber > generation, and the Python exposed API. Probably in that order of > priority too. Certainly the Python API changes are already tripping us > up, but only when they have already been broken in committed code. >> >> Being able to regression test changes to optimisations and code > tidying will help that move along anyway as you can be more confident in > your changes having complete coverage once the number of tests increases. >> >> I am prepared to say that I'll undertake this work too. Obviously it > can't start straight away as I'm currently doing work on the Windows > scripting build system and python-a-mingw-us packaging. >> >> Is anyone against regression testing, or have alternatives that would > achieve similar confidence in committed code? My vote is for regression > testing.
I think it's good idea as long as we think it through before we start implementing them. I want avoid a free for all mentality and then have to go back and clean up the mess. We should set down some preliminary guidelines for testing along the lines of the coding policy before we start actually writing test code. This way developers will no what is expected. >> > > I fully support the idea. It will expand the size of the source tree > significantly over time, and increase maintainence, but these costs are > dwarfed by the benefits. > > Pyhon itself has quite a developed test harness environment with lots of > tests. They were helpful in getting a-ming-us up to a certain > confidence level. I did not need an understanding of the test harness > environment to use it. > > The other thing I learned was that python can call arbitrary C functions > in an arbitrary dll, even if they are not swigged. I've used the Python unit test framework for testing Python code. I never thought about using it for testing C++ code but it does seem feasible. Does anybody have any experience doing this or are there any examples of anyone else doing this so we can get an idea of what is involved? If the Python testing framework is not adequate, we can always take a look at the Boost testing framework. I looked at this several months ago and it looked like a good fit given that we already have Boost as a dependency and it's feature parity seemed as good as any of the other open source C/C++ testing frameworks and even many of the commercial testing frameworks. > >> We would need good support from all, new code requires new tests, and > nobody is better suited to devising the tests than the person who > specified the new functionality - which means all developers would > probably end up writing test cases at some point. >> >> Best Regards, Brian. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers >> Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net > <mailto:kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net> >> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers >> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
