Re: assertions in Ruby

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Chen [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 1:36 PM
> To: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: assertions in Ruby
> 
> 
> On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 03:07:53AM +0900, Volkmann, Mark wrote:
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Alan Chen [mailto:[e-mail]]
> > > Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 11:37 AM
> > > To: [e-mail]
> > > Subject: Re: assertions in Ruby
> > >
> > > On Fri, Oct 04, 2002 at 10:43:46PM +0900, Volkmann, Mark wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Is anyone aware of a Ruby module that adds support for
> > > assertions such as what
> > > > is supported in Java 1.4?  I wrote such a thing yesterday
> > > and am considering
> > > > releasing it if I'm not duplicating what someone else has
> > > already done.
> > > > I've included some examples below showing how mine is used.
> > >
> > > I have an unreleased, partailly completed module which include the
> > > Test::Unit asserts when $DEBUG is set and do nothing otherwise. It
> > > looks almost the same as yours.  The only suggestion I 
> have is maybe
> > > working it in with the Ruby::Unit or Test::Unit frameworks.
> > I'm not quite convinced that assertions should be 
> integrated with a unit
> > testing framework. They seem fundamentally different to me.
> > With assertions enabled, an application generally stops as 
> soon as one fails. 
> > Results are not collected into a report since only one 
> failure is reported. 
> > Assertions go in the code and remain there for 
> documentation purposes.
> > With unit tests, tests continue even if one fails.  Results 
> are collected into
> > a report.  Unit tests go in a separate class written 
> exclusively for testing
> > purposes.
> > What kinds of things do you envision that an assertion 
> framework borrow from a
> > unit testing framework?
> 
> Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that unit testing and assertions should
> be strongly tied together.  Test::Unit for example provides a wide
> range of asserts already. The Test::Unit assert code itself is a
> fairly orthogonal module, and, as far as I know, has no other
> dependencies on other parts of the unit test framework.  So.. I just
> did something like the following:
> 
> if $DEBUG
> 	module Myasserts
> 		require 'test/unit/assertions'
> 		include Test::Unit::Assertions
> 	end
> else
> 	# all empty assert methods
> 	module Myasserts
> 		def flunk(msg);end
> 		def assert(expr,msg);end
> 		# other assertions omitted...                
> 	end
> end
> 
> Now instead of Myasserts, an integrated module might be named
> Test::Assertions.  The main reason to separate into its own module is
> that you always want the asserts to fire in a unit test, but not
> always during an application run.  I don't really care if its
> $DEBUG that controls it or some other flag. $DEBUG was just convenient
> in my case.

Ahh ... now I see what you're getting at.  I'll see if I can rewrite my
assertion code to build on top of assert.rb in RUnit.  Thanks for the tip!


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