[webkit-dev] Simplifying syntax in test_expectations.txt (bug 86691)

[Ryosuke Niwa]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Dirk Pranke <dpranke at chromium.org> wrote:

> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 3:21 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Dirk Pranke <dpranke at chromium.org>
> wrote:
> >> As I said before, I believe they increase the readability of the file.
> > I see them as pure noise.
>
> Clearly, different people can have different syntactic preferences :).


Yup.

With all due respect to Maciej and Darin, neither of them have spent
> any significant amount of time working with test_expectations.txt
> files. While I appreciate that it's nice for the syntax to be
> approachable for newbies, I'm not inclined to bias in favor of newbies
> over people who are experienced. Of the people who have actually used
> the file, so far you're the only person who's spoken up as not liking
> them. Since different people prefer different things, I'm inclined to
> go with the majority of experienced users here. I am sorry if that
> means you lose out; I don't like it if anyone is unhappy and would
> prefer it if we could please everyone.
>

It's important for tools to be easy to use. I don't think we should justify
the status quo solely on the basis that people have been using it like it.

As in most other source code, I suspect things are read a lot more
> than they are written. It's also pretty easy to write macros using
> your editor of choice, or even to just copy&paste the required lines
> in from the NRWT output.
>

I agree. But like I said, the current format is hard to read for me.

 > Perhaps we can address these two problems using some tools. e.g. I don't
> > care about the format of test_expectations.txt at all if there was a GUI
> > tool that lets me add/edit entries easily without ever having to look at
> raw
> > files. Similarly, people who are advocating to keep the current syntax
> may
> > not mind changing the format in the repository if there were a way to
> view
> > the file using the current format for easier readability.
>
> Sure. Perhaps it would be more useful to spend time working on adding
> suppression support to garden-o-matic and getting other ports to use
> that instead of worrying about hand-editing files.
>

Yeah, I'm increasingly convinced that's a better use of our time than
bikeshedding on this thread.

- Ryosuke
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