From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-01-09T16:40:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Test::Unit fails w/no tests [was: testunit 0.1.6 problems]

On Thursday, January 9, 2003, 12:52:33 PM, Mike wrote:

>> In my mind, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with an empty unit test.

> I tend to agree with Gavin that an empty unit test shouldn't be flagged as a
> failure.  I use them for placeholders too.


I'll add that in my last Ruby project, I actually wrote my own test
running code so that each test class was run individually (instead of
all test methods being thrown into a large soup and executed
homogenously).  The output was something like:

                                          ----- TestFroboz

[normal Test::Unit output]

                                          ----- TestQuarkXP

[normal Test::Unit output]

etc.


I think I made it optionally run the default way.  Sometimes I want to
see combined outputs (just for that reassuring "0 errors, 0
failures"), and other times I want to see the output separated.
Motivations:
 - I know something's failing in one area but am ignoring that for now
 - I want to see how many tests are being performed in each class
 - I want a better breakdown of where things are happening

The second motivation specified is the point of all this.  I *know*
that I don't have enough test coverage; this helps me find where
coverage is low, without spitting "failures" at me.  Of course, I
consider some test methods critical; they have an automatic failure
with the message "Not implemented".

Summary: there are plenty of ways to manage your tests, and inventing
failures when there was no code to fail seems to me to be a bad fit.

Gavin