We *really* need a development model change !

[Francois Gouget]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2001, Andriy Palamarchuk wrote:

[... Perl/C pros and cons for testing]

   I think you summarised the pros and cons of both options quite
well. I would add just one thing against perl in its current form: AFAIK
(but it may have changed since), the current perl framework does not
support callback functions. This can be a problem for testing things
like:
 * CreateThread: takes a function to be run in the new thread
 * timers: SetTimer(...,timerproc)
 * window procs: We can write quite a few tests that create some widget
(a list, table, ...) and then sends messages to check the state of that
widget (select an item in the list, then check which item is selected,
whether the 'hot' item is still hot, etc.), and or the resulting
sequence of other messages. While these are not 'GUI' tests in that they
don't make sure that the list displays correctly (or at all), they check
important properties of the widget implementation.



> The big question is a tool to test GUI. I did not find
> any OS Windows GUI testing frameworks :-(

   Andreas has already replied and i agree with him. But I'll basically
repeat what he said to give it more weight :-)

   GUI testing is not 'the big question'. It's irrelevant right now.
   And what I really don't want to happen, it to see us refuse to pick
the low hanging fruits and starve to death because we don't have a
ladder that lets us reach the fruits at the top of the tree.

   In other words, there are thousands of APIs that we can test very
easily and we should write tests for them NOW. We should not wait for
the development of a hypothetical framework that would let us also test
graphical (i.e. daoes it display right) issues.
   Testing all these APIs represents enough work to keep us busy for
quite some time and can already benefit Wine greatly. So really, at this
time, given the amount of effort required to even get something usable,
"GUI testing" is irrelevant and should be postponed.

   (of course if someone out there really wants to develop a GUI testing
framework and donate it to Wine, go ahead, all I want is that we don't
wait for one)


--
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
                     Linux: the choice of a GNU generation