Re: Testing/Working on PyUNO?

Hi;

The C/C++ groups I worked in had all testers working in a scripting
language. Those who had the skills and interest to write in C/C++ moved to
product code. It was easy for developers to debug problems because the test
application allowed you to configure which tests to run, the IDE was easy to
use with single-step debugging, etc. You'd need two debuggers running, but
it worked great and was little slower than working with C++ tests.

In the situation here, I agree that unit tests should be in C++, typically
written by the developers when they write their code. However, there can
still be room for further testing in Python. I've seen code that would call
random APIs with random values and via genetic algorithms would come up with
good ways to stress and crash the product. It would find plenty of bugs that
no unit test ever could. The test harness was very good, it only reported
problems that were reproducible, and the app would narrow it down to the
shortest number of steps. So perhaps it is good to figure out whether
something is a unit test, a UNO test, or some other fancier kind of testing.
If a developer doesn't want to run Python, they can just look at the stack
trace and try to figure it out on their own similar to what happens when
bugs are reported today. Python just makes it more reproducible.

It also seems that people who are interested in Python today could work on
making it easier to contribute to LibreOffice in Python. There is a small
community of Python hackers contributing to today, mostly it seems it is
just Xisco Fauli. You don't need to re-write the whole app in Python to
bring in new people, as there are already plenty of places to contribute,
especially if you consider Base ;-) I find more and more programmers who
don't have C++ experience, meanwhile Python is one of the fastest growing
languages.

Regards,

-Keith



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