# from Ovid
# on Thursday 22 January 2009 11:01:
>>>The programmer still has to count if the programmer wants a plan.
>
>> I'm not sure anybody *wants* a plan.
><snip>
unsnip:
>>A way to ensure that every test ran or accurate progress reporting,
>>yes. It seems to me that some are just willing to suffer counting
>>their tests to achieve that.
>
>Lots of people want plans. Lots of people don't want plans. That's
>not an argument I expect anybody is going to *win* (even if they're
> right).
>
>This has been argued to death. Many times. Over and over.
This is not an argument. The word or notion 'plan' is not really the
point. I actually want a mechanism (which one might call a plan)
wherein the test can guarantee that e.g. no unexpected exit() happened
and also provide accurate progress reporting. If we have to call this
guarantee+progress a 'plan' for lack of better terminology, then I
would restate my assertion as: "I'm not sure anybody *wants* _no_
plan."
If anybody has a desire to manually count their tests and statically
specify a numeric plan, plus numeric skips, I would like to please
understand that desire.
If anybody really wants the test to "only maybe" test things or even run
forever, I would be similarly curious to understand that.
That is, are you counting because you *must* count due to limitations of
the Test functionality? If that is the only reason, it would seem to
me that now might be the time to revisit some assumptions.
I personally use no_plan only because I can't be bothered to manually
count things and don't want to assume that the number of tests run on
*my* computer is somehow a universal constant.
Thanks,
Eric
--
"Everything goes wrong all at once."
--Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law
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