Re: Need for a Emacs regression test suite

[David Kastrup]

dhruva <address@hidden> writes:

> On 9/9/07, Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:
>>      The various changes getting into Emacs and number of things breaking
>>     sporadically, IMO we need to have a regression suite. A collection
>>     batch mode scripts and macros to test the GUI invocation.
>>
>> I don't see how that is possible, but if you know a way to do it,
>> please do it.
>
> I will start looking into the XEmacs testing framework. Once I have
> something working on my local box, I will get back. Let us delay the
> legalities till we get the technicalities sorted out.

Stephen has already outlined the parts of the legal issues he sees and
just what kind of help he is willing to provide getting them solved
(thanks for that!).

I would suggest that you are careful not to invest too much
Emacs-specific work that might be lost ultimately due to legal
reasons, though this warning might appear somewhat premature at the
moment.  In any way, it would seem important to evaluate the testing
framework and see how well it applies to Emacs and how useful it is,
and for that, it certainly makes sense to write some tests and see how
easy it is, and how useful the results.

If it applies suitably well (and from Stephen's description that half
of the tests get passed by Emacs this seems very much so), it is
important that we get the legalities solved for the framework.  That
is really indispensible.  Getting papers for the tests themselves
could then be done on a case-by-case basis: it would not preclude us
from writing our own tests or embedding those that are properly
accounted for.

It certainly seems like something we should pursue.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum