Standardized Tests for Cross Language

[David]

Posted a question on the haml list a few days ago....

I am the developer of pHAML, which has worked great in years in a
production environment, proven solid.

Time now for an upgrade, since I wrote pHAML, we have moved to a "test
first" approach in our web services. So this now presents the
question/opportunity: can we develop a list of unit tests that when
passed, will ensure that the library supports the "HAML Standard".
Maybe even use the lab as a validator.

I agree with some of the comments that a true specification
development can soak a lot of time--but it may be suitable in this
case to "standardize" against the documentation. In other words, if
someone wants to invest the time to create a "specification" and chase
down the committees that would have to approve it, they can. But for
now, we can center around a standard set of tested core functionality.

What I could use is a set of unit tests that I can put into our test
harness. That way I can make sure the library is fully covered, which
will ease the amount of support effort.

Maybe an idea would be for Hampton, or another code guru, to designate
a set of tests that can be viewed as "standard" in the source. These
tests would have to be Ruby free, since this is cross language. This
is kind of what I have done.

I will then build to those tests, when that is done, we can loop back
and cover PHP equivalents to Ruby (such as object references, etc.).
Maybe create a set of language specific options: that way PHP folks
can use objects as they do in PHP--maybe that will increase adoption--
IMHO--so you guys comment freely.

I wrote what I added at: phaml.sf.net -- you guys can review through
and see what you would keep/toss feature wise.

Here is the candy--I have the pHAML project already in the Zend
Framework incubator--we have a chance of pushing this into the Zend
Framework, millions of downloads--maybe widen distribution.

Thoughts y'all?

--d

[Nathan Weizenbaum]

See this post for my thoughts on this.