From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-01-05T07:09:24+09:00
Subject: Re: testunit 0.1.6 problems

On Sunday, January 5, 2003, 2:46:04 AM, nathaniel wrote:

> If you tell Test::Unit to run something, and there are no tests to run
> in what you told it to run, it will give you an error. If you add a test
> to TC_Foo, it should start passing.

> I'm curious to know what others think of this change/feature. Does it
> make sense? Are there reasons to want a TestCase that has no test
> methods? I added the error at someone's request, but I'm willing to take
> it out again if there are compelling reasons to do so.


A failure, in a test unit sense, means strictly (to me) that an
assertion has failed, and an error means strictly that an uncaught
exception was detected.

I see no need to mark the lack of tests with a failure: one. it's
misleading; and two, it's inconvenient.  I haven't done it myself, but
I would do this: decide my tests for a certain class are no longer
valid, delete them, but leave the shell (the TestCase) there so I can
create some new ones in the future.

I suggest emitting a warning in hte event of an empty TestCase.
Perhaps it could be (optionally) made a failure with a method like
TestCase#assert_tests_exist=, or some other approach.

Gavin