Re: Are self-describing reftests required?

On Thursday 2011-08-25 18:24 +0200, Øyvind Stenhaug wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:10:57 +0200, L. David Baron
> <dbaron@dbaron.org> wrote:
> 
> >I think requiring that reftests be self-describing would be a huge
> >mistake; in many cases it significantly incresaes (i.e., multiplies
> >by a small integer) the amount of work that the test author has to
> >do.
> 
> On the other hand, having just a cryptic rendering increases the
> amount of work any future user has to do when personally inspecting
> individual tests, analyzing failures etc. It's a tradeoff (kind of
> like spending effort commenting code,really). As someone who spends
> a significant amount of time both authoring and examining testcases,
> I certainly prefer striving to make them succinct and neat with
> regards to both code and visual appearance.

In many cases, the easiest way to understand a reftest is to diff
the test with the reference; the diff is often relatively
straightforward.

-David

-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla Corporation               http://www.mozilla.com/   𝄂