[webkit-dev] Testing changes to CodeGenerator*.pm

[James Robinson]

As a concrete example, I found this test setup helpful for this patch:
http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/58345.  A nice side effect was that it
revealed a bug in CodeGeneratorGObject.pm and let me fix it without having
to set up build setup for whatever it is that uses the GObject bindings.

I agree that golden file testing is a very high-maintenance fragile test
method, but it's better than nothing.  If this framework didn't exist then I
would have likely made the change and relied on spot checking and our
existing automated tests to catch any regressions which is less than ideal.

- James

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Ojan Vafai <ojan at chromium.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Alexey Proskuryakov <ap at webkit.org>wrote:
>
>> On 29.04.2010, at 11:17, Yaar Schnitman wrote:
>>
>>> I've been using the tool for a couple of patches in V8. It really boost
>>> the development cycle, helps reviewers understanding what a cryptic perl
>>> block of code actually does, and side effects are easy to find. Once you
>>> start using it, its becoming hard to work without it. Give it a try!
>>>
>>
>> 'm thinking about how this tool could have helped with the CodeGenerator
>> changes I made in the past, and it seems that it wouldn't have detected any
>> changes, and could require me to find creative ways to test the new
>> behavior.
>
>
> I don't really follow the what the maintenance overhead is. How does this
> actually cause you more than a trivial amount of extra work? Maybe a
> specific example would help.
>
> Isn't this just like having a layout test with expected results? It's a
> small isolated test instead of testing everything. That seems like a good
> thing.
>
> More importantly, it lets you be sure that every feature of the code
> generator has some testing. In the real IDLs, a feature might stop getting
> used temporarily and then changes to the code generator would not be readily
> apparent.
>
> Ojan
>
> P.S. Sorry for the double-post some of you got. Sent from the wrong email
> address at first.
>
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