From: David Chelimsky <dchelimsky@...>
Date: 2008-12-16T23:47:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Can't get output from MiniTest

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 1:14 PM, Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@zenspider.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 13, 2008, at 10:17 , Joshua Ballanco wrote:
>
>> Quick question from the unwashed masses: I admit I have not been following
>> along closely, but is there a reason that 'testrb' wouldn't be moved from
>> test/unit to minitest/unit?
>
> um. this got kinda big. sorry.
>
> 1) a small (semantic) correction: nothing was moved from test/unit to
> minitest as minitest was implemented from scratch.
>
> 2) I implemented only what I found to be the essence of test/unit and really
> that was the testcase public api and a very simple runner. I went with
> subclassing as the only testcase discovery mechanism because that works
> better for junit and rubinius (because ObjectSpace.each_object is a PITA).
>
> 3) I didn't see any point in testrb. Indeed I forgot about it until
> reminded. I've never once used testrb in my normal process nor has anyone
> I've ever paired with. (Well, to be honest, I tried a couple times back in
> the day, didn't get it to work for me, and ignored it from then on). I've
> pretty much always run my tests via autotest, rake, or just straight up
> (usually in that priority order).
>
> 4) Tests are just ruby. They should run the same way that anything else you
> write in ruby runs: with the ruby interpreter. I really dislike systems like
> rspec and mspec that require a runner script to work. They're harder to use,
> hook, debug and generally have way more "stuff" than I ever want to deal
> with.
>
> In short: "Do the simplest thing that could possibly work" should apply to
> more than just the code.

How about The Principle of Least Surprise?