The fact there are functions in Sage untested is worrying, and I think its fair to say most people would like to see 100% doctest coverage, but IMHO, we need a plan for this to happen, and the plan inforced, otherwise this will not happen soon. So I'm suggesting we collect ideas for a plan.
Two things that do NOT appear to work, at least in isolation are: A) Saying coverage should be x % in release Y, then hoping it is. B) Saying coverage should be x % by the date DD/MM/YY, then hoping it is. Both of these have been tried, and niether are working. The graph here http://thales.math.uqam.ca/~labbes/blogue/2011/03/evolution-of-the-overall-doctest-coverage-of-sage/ seems to indicate that progress on this has slowed over the last year or so, where progress was about 4.7% per year. (I'm not actually sure I agree with his line of best fit, which would suggest to me the situation has slowed even more.) A few ideas that might work, are below. I would add, I'm not suggesting they are all very good (in particular 1 and 4 are a bit excessive), but I mention them anyway. 1) Having a release, where the only aim is to increase doctest coverage. No patches are accepted, unless they increase coverage. 2) Finding sections of code which are not tested, and depreciating them, unless someone writes the doctests, in which case the depreciation can be removed. 3) Having a release, where anyone can submit a patch which gets reviewed, but the release manager does not merge it unless the author of the patch can provide another patch which increase doctest coverage. 4) Finding individuals that have written code that is not tested, and not merging any more patches from them unless they first add tests to the ALL code they have already written. 5) Finding individuals that have written code that is not tested, and not merging any more patches from them unless they first add tests to a number (say 5) tests for all the code they have written which is untested. 6) Not accepting any patches, unless a equal number of lines of code are submitted which add doctests. 7) Paying individuals to just write tests. I believe if we want to achieve 100% coverage, we need to do more than A and B above, as they are proved not to work. Can anyone suggest anything else, or have any comments. Dave -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
