On Wednesday 05 April 2006 14:09, Adam Kennedy wrote: > And now in return, we have new modules that changes the way EVERYBODY > else's code works, and changes the meaning of that code instead, so > Test::MockObject gets less spurious bug reports.
You mischaracterize the situation. There is no possible way that Test::MockObject or Test::MockObject::Extends could work if someone were to call UNIVERSAL::can() or UNIVERSAL::isa() as a function on an instance of either class. By using both modules, I can detect nearly all incorrect uses, work around them, and warn that the broken code will probably not work correctly and needs exploration. How is that not valuable for users of my code? (I do grant that getting this code right is difficult and my core perl bug remains unfixed, but I have an idea.) > And to make matters worse, now there's a warning suppression option, so > they now just magically change the way the code works, potentially > breaking it without warning. The code was already broken. It was *impossible* for Test::MockObject or Test::MockObject::Extends to work in certain cases. Using UNIVERSAL::isa and UNIVERSAL::can makes it possible to detect those situations and work around them, if possible, but at least warn about them. For people who don't care about the warnings, they have the option of disabling them. I welcome legitimate bug reports and test cases to both modules and try to fix them when possible. I don't really see the point of warning about a usage but not correcting it. (Isn't it Python's shell that, when you type Ctrl-d, says "Type 'exit' to exit."? What's the point in that? I want to exit, you know I want to exit, and I don't care if you warn -- but don't make me read your mind. Interactive shells should not be parser-hampered text adventures.) > > For example, Template::Toolkit may *never* work with Test::MockObject > > because the author refuses to ask the author of CGI.pm to fix a bug in > > the latter module, despite apparently knowing about it for several years > > and apparently preferring to break my code instead. > > Turnabout is not fair play when it comes to bugs. I fail to understand. Should I not fix bugs because someone might rely on the broken behavior? Template::Toolkit has a bug. Chris Dolan reported it. I confirmed that it's TT's problem. Andy won't fix it. I will do all I can to work around it in Test::MockObject, but I can't fix it without forking Template::Toolkit. The best I can do is put up in big flashing neon letters, "Hey, there's a bug in this other code and my code will never work correctly here. Beware." Again, being explicit when possible when things won't work seems like a big benefit to users. (Besides, I assume heavily that people won't use Test::MockObject much outside of tests, where they ought to be able to debug, well, bugs.) -- c
