[Scons-users] best practices: unit tests

[R0b0t1]

On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 8:19 PM, Mats Wichmann <mats at wichmann.us> wrote:
> On 02/01/2018 04:11 PM, R0b0t1 wrote:
>
>> Unit tests are a mixed bag.
>
> Yeah, I know nearly all the arguments. Made a lot of them myself :)  But
> that's how modern projects work: the founders lay down TDD-style "thou
> shalt not write an API without unit tests" rules.  It's not my call to
> change those requirements, and I think they're actually fine: API tests
> work on verifying documented behavior and don't have the same
> variability problems you cite.
>

But they don't. API tests verify that the input selected gives the
output in the test. It is not a description that holds for all valid
input.

There is an even larger problem, which is that even if you can prove
that a program is "type safe" all you have done is prove that it is
logically consistent within some theoretical framework. Even if you
can prove it adheres to a specification, you still haven't proved that
the specification reflects what you actually want to happen.

>> It sounds like referring you to an existing system would help - so,
>> you might look at Ant and Maven and the structure of large Java
>> projects.
>
> Sure, you can depend on external stuff.  The project I'm on does (in
> particular, the java additions do make use of Maven, but I don't touch
> those bits, so...).  The question was about doing this in scons, since
> this is an scons list. If the best practice is: don't try to do it in
> scons, that's fine, I was just trying to flush out opinions.
>

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting you rely on Ant/Maven. But for e.g. Python
you just use the unittest module, or Nose and py.test and then run it.
With Java projects, the tests/ directory is usually just complete
programs that run. It may be one program. It doesn't matter which
build system you are using.

The answer is very language specific.

Cheers,
     R0b0t1