[swift-corelibs-dev] [xctest] Who tests the tests?

[Tony Parker]

Hi Brian,

> On Dec 3, 2015, at 3:45 PM, Brian Gesiak <modocache at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello! This is in reference to https://github.com/apple/swift-corelibs-xctest/pull/3 <https://github.com/apple/swift-corelibs-xctest/pull/3>. That pull request contains a commit that attempts to refactor XCTest such that it is more "unit-testable”.
> 

Cool, thanks for looking into this area.

> To do so, it gives XCTMain an additional parameter: a list of objects conforming to the Reporter protocol. I think of this as a minimal, corelibs equivalent to Apple's XCTest's XCTestObserver.h. I say "minimal" because Reporter only defines Reporter.log(), whereas XCTestObserver has one method for each kind of test event (started, failed, finished, etc.).
> 

Do you think it’d be possible to split out the idea of adding this new API to XCTest from getting some tests for XCTest itself?

The reason I’m asking is that (like Foundation and dispatch), we’re trying to keep the API surface of this XCTest very similar to the one that ships today with Xcode. This will help developers who need to integrate their cross-platform tests into suites that include features that Obj-C XCTest has that we will probably not add to the Swift one (e.g., UI testing).

We made a concession to language limitations with the XCTMain function, because there is no way to dynamically discover all of the test cases. I’d really like to get rid of it in the long term in favor of something else; maybe a decoration like @testable that we could find automatically.

- Tony

> These reporters are, for now, storied in a global array. In the future, I'd like to discuss moving XCTest to a model in which all tests are (optionally) run in sub-processes, each of which may (optionally) run in parallel. This global array most certainly won't work for such a change, but for now, I simply want to have regression tests on the project. It's hard to send pull requests without knowing everything still works!
> 
> Besides this approach, which modifies XCTest in order to test it, it may be more prudent to add tests *without* changing XCTest at all. To do so, I could add tests that run programs that call XCTMain(), then verify what's printed to stdout. This could be done using a Python script (which would go well with the build script, also in Python).
> 
> I'd love input on which of these approaches sounds more viable. Other ideas are also, of course, welcome!
> 
> - Brian Gesiak


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