From: Nathaniel Talbott <nathaniel@...>
Date: 2002-03-30T09:59:18+09:00
Subject: RE: RUNIT: mixin instead of inheriting?

Phil Tomson [mailto:ptkwt@aracnet.com] wrote:

> Yes, it's rather odd.  Let me try to explain:
> 
> I'm making this module that allows one to describe & simulate 
> hardware in Ruby (RHDL).  Now, in mainstream Hardware 
> Description Languages(HDL) the designer will design the 
> hardware model and then make something called a Testbench 
> which is also written in the HDL.  The Testbench is used to 
> determine if the model of the hardware being described is 
> functionally correct.  This is in some sense similar to the 
> concept of Unit testing in the software world.  In a 
> testbench you test the value of certain signals at certain 
> times and if they don't match what you expect you can assert an error.
> 
> So my idea was that if Test::Unit was mixed in, the design 
> would contain the testbench as well.  Perhaps it doesn't make 
> much sense, though.  I can certainly live with the current 
> way of doing it, but the potential advantage of the other is 
> that I could put asserts within the actual design itself and 
> have their pass/fail status be tracked as well.

I wonder if it would be enough to simply include Test::Unit::Assertions
(which is already a module)? Then you could use the assertions in the
TestBench code, and wrap the running of the TestBench in a rescue for
Test::Unit::AssertionFailedError. You don't get all of the test running
stuff, but it seems like the running of a TestBench is probably
different than the running of a TestCase (although that's just a guess).

Would that work?


Nathaniel

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