Code review comment for lp:~jkakar/launchpadlib/testing-support

On November 17, 2009, Leonard Richardson wrote:
> But the reason I never wrote this branch is the reason I must regretfully
> vote "disapprove" on this code review: its promise of additional test
> coverage is mostly an illusion.

I disagree with this assessment. It is true that this doesn't help at all in
ensuring integration-level tests, but it does help in ensuring unit-test
coverage.

This is basically an easy way to write stubs that are at least to some extent
share the external interface with the Launchpad web service.

Unit-tests are there to assert that your code works as you expect it to work
_as a unit_. The fact that the code might not work when used against the real
web service is an integration problem and should be covered by a separate
testing strategy (integration testing).

But unit-tests are very useful for a fast TDD cycle, which is very hard to
achieve when you are doing integration testing and have to pay the Launchpad
start-up cost.

I agree thought that the WADL moving target is the biggest problem here. Maybe
if the build step could try to download the latest one, that would be less of
a problem.

--
Francis J. Lacoste
<email address hidden>