Re: GNOME goal candidates

[Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro gnome org>]

It sounds like most everyone else supports installed tests. OK, then.

On Wed, 2017-03-01 at 10:22 +0000, Philip Withnall wrote:
> I agree that developers need to be engaged with adding more unit
> tests
> and code coverage if such a goal is to be useful. I wonder if making
> it
> a goal would kick-start some people to do that? I don’t think we can
> ever expect the majority of maintainers to care about (or have enough
> time to care about) code coverage and unit testing — but GNOME goals
> have been useful catalysts in the past. I guess a suitably well
> publicised and tutorialised blog post would work just as well though.

This is the other thing. The goals should be achievable, something we
can look at in a year or two and say "all apps meet the goal" and close
it, not a longstanding epic that stays open forever. The installed
tests and coverage goals do not really qualify. Even though more tests
are definitely desirable, I don't think it's reasonable to use the
GNOME Goals project for this, even if it would be nice to see as many
projects as possible adopting it.

Maybe I am being too negative here. It does seem odd to say that doing
something desirable should not be a goal. But a longstanding pie-in-
the-sky project is very different from existing goals. Switching to
g_timeout_add_seconds() or adding a GtkHeaderBar are quick tasks that
all apps should be able to accomplish easily. Adding a comprehensive
testsuite, not so much. And adding just one or two installed tests,
while a good starting point, is not very useful on its own.

Michael