On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 3:27 AM, Ihe Onwuka
ihe(_dot_)onwuka(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com <
xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 8:11 AM, BR Chrisman brchrisman(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com <
xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 10:38 PM, Ihe Onwuka
ihe(_dot_)onwuka(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com <
xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 8:38 PM, Ihe Onwuka
<ihe(_dot_)onwuka(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com>
wrote:
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 7:57 PM, Vasudev Kandhadai
vasu(_dot_)kandhadai(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com
<xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
wrote:
Dear All,
is there a good reason to deploy a XSLT unit testing framework?
No.
I have never seen any serious XSLT dev env where the XSLT unit testing
was either done religiously, or considered mandatory. Other than a very
religious Java development team with strict Junit set up with Maven etc,
who have adopted XSLT into their dev env, who would now want to extend the
same ideologies to the XSLT world? I have personally never used or
utilized practically any XSLT unit testing framework in any project and
nor
was there any requirement to do so...
Why is Java a valid reference point. It's a completely different
language.
Right. This merits amplification. The phrase "Unit Test Frameworks" has
acquired in my view a specific connotation related to ideas from Test
Driven Development. They are a creature that evolved from the procedural
programming community to solve problems that arise during the development
of procedural programs.
XSLT done right is declarative. The programmer does not have the same
level of control over what processing (and therefore what tests) gets done
when. So before adopting a methodology founded on "Unit testing frameworks"
the first question I would ask is - in XSLT what should constitute a unit -
or to put it more finely what is the smallest component that should be the
subject of a discrete testing effort.
Is it a stylesheet. I don't think so, at least not if you are coding
declaratively. How would I think about it. Well what is more useful on a
bug report - that there is a bug on stylesheet X, or that executing tests
targeted at template Y in stylesheet X exposed a bug. So I would say the
focus on testing an XSLT program should be at the template rule level and
if I were to adopt any sort of test driven methodology it might evolve
around the concept of the template rule as a unit (with all that entails).
That however is a big if.
If everything needed to test a particular template could be assembled,
and the template's name is passed in as initial template... then there's
mocking calls like the various input/output doc stuff... and parameters to
the template... But it sounds like a lot of the tools out there do this
already, like: "show me only the nodes resulting from this template".
This is why I say it is a big if. My goal in that approach is the
traceability of the bug to the template, but I would baulk at going so far
as to isolate execution of that template or to have a framework show me the
nodes that result, because the quality of my diagnosis may be compromised
by the morass of information. This is why commercial automated testing
tools are a fraud - the problem is not test execution (which is primarily
what they help with) and hidden in there may be tests that used to pass but
perhaps no longer should and your framework/test tool isn't going to help
you with that.
If people could just write code to minimise the incidence of mocking to
genuine external dependencies (as opposed to self inflicted tight coupling
cause by using global variables) then it would also help, but only your
better programmers will do that. Some of the framework paraphenalia make it
possible for mediocre programmers to get things done that they may not have
been able to accomplish before - that is usually seen as a positive from
the management perspective. Issues relating to technical debt can defer
...sometimes that works and sometimes it is disastrous.
Reminds me of a pet peeve I have of test frameworks which require code be
written in a certain style that may not be otherwise appropriate (or any
test framework which requires instrumentation in code itself).
Fortunately XSLT lends itself to automation... so creating an nonintrusive
framework seems more easily achievable.
Ideally nobody looks at the code and says "why is it written like that?"
with the answer being "so we can use test tool XYZ".
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