Re: Will Martin contribute to XEmacs in the future?

mb> I hope you're not suggesting that there be only one set of mb> tests, to be applied to all different versions of the Of course I am. mb> software. The point of a test suite is to reflect what works mb> in any particular version. Well, why not just reduce it to (message "All tests passed.") and make absolutely sure that works, then? Because the point of a test suite is to reflect a _specification_, ie, what _should_ work, of course! If "stuff" depends on new features, then condition on them, and emit "unimplemented" warnings. Don't condition on versions; who knows if a fix might not be backported? If you must condition on versions, when "stuff" is known not to work in a particular version and there's no feature to test, you should either accept the failure or (if it would impact the system) disable the test and emit a "disabled" warning. mb> Test suites are the ultimate non-portable software, Test _scaffolding_ is of course non-portable, since it may depend on implementation-specific hooks and extensions to instrument behavior. Test _suites_ should be portable to any implementation that purports to comply with the specification. mb> and rightly so. Necessary evil, at best. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.