Re: [widgets interface] Tests generated from WebIDL

Dominique Hazael-Massieux wrote:
> Le jeudi 12 novembre 2009 à 17:35 +0100, Marcos Caceres a écrit :
>> On the other hand, automated test generation can generate a large number
>> of test cases and is less prone to human errors. But, at the same time,
>> it cannot test some things that are written in the prose. For example, a
>> AU must not fire Storage events when first populating the preferences
>> attribute. This is impossible to express in IDL.
>
> I complete agree that manual tests bring a lot of value, but I think it
> would be unwise to refuse automated tests that express exactly what the
> spec expresses — in particular, they can be extremely useful to detect
> bugs in the WebIDL defined in the specs, bugs that are extremely
> unlikely to be detected through manual testing.

Like I said, we are certainly not rejecting automated testing, we (me) 
are just not up to that stage yet. I completely agree with you that it 
will help us find more potential bugs in the IDL itself.

> In other words, I don’t see why manually and automatically created tests
> are mutually exclusive, and I see very clearly how they can complete
> each other.

I did not mean to imply that they are. They are certainly complimentary 
(even for P&C, I refined the ABNF by using the abnfgen app, which helped 
me find a lot of errors - so I certainly know the value that comes with 
automated test generation).

Kind regards,
Marcos

Received on Thursday, 12 November 2009 17:26:39 UTC