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

[Brian Gesiak]

Excellent, thanks for the feedback everyone!

On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 10:39 PM, Daniel Dunbar <daniel_dunbar at apple.com> wrote:
> It should be possible to use an out-of-process model that still uses XCTest itself to run the tests. For example, in the package manager we have some tests which spawn the package manager in order to test the end-to-end behavior. Ideally we would only do this for a small number of tests that really need this level of testing, and use unit testing for the rest.

I'll send a pull request with this approach, since I believe it's the
least invasive to the current API while still getting us regression
tests for the current implementation. Of course I'd be thrilled if
someone beats me to it! :)

> On Dec 3, 2015, at 8:03 PM, Tony Parker <anthony.parker at apple.com> wrote:
> 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).

Absolutely agree. Still, once we have regression tests in place, I'd
love to start a conversation about whether we could provide a Obj-C
XCTest-compatible API layer on top of some more flexible architecture.

> On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Mike Ferris <mferris at apple.com> wrote:
> One possible direction to consider which would be more consistent with our goals this year for API-compatibility would be to look into implementing XCTestObserver.

Yes! Very exciting. We'll need to consider how methods like
`-[XCTestObservation testBundleWillStart:]` map to SwiftXCTest,
especially considering we don't use NSBundle at all (which I think is
a great thing). I'll be looking forward to participating in more
discussions on this mailing list.

- Brian Gesiak


On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Mike Ferris <mferris at apple.com> wrote:
>
> One possible direction to consider which would be more consistent with our goals this year for API-compatibility would be to look into implementing XCTestObserver.
>
> Mike
>
> On Dec 3, 2015, at 8:03 PM, Tony Parker <anthony.parker at apple.com> wrote:
>
> 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. 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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