Re: GNOME goal candidates

[Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org>]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 07:26:19AM -0600, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> 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.

Replacing a menubar + toolbar to a GtkHeaderBar can be a major
undertaking for large applications (for example for IDEs, Evolution,
etc). It's not always a "quick task", especially if the application
needs to move away from GtkUIManager/GtkAction.

The GNOME goals about unit tests don't require to write a comprehensive
test suite. If there is just one small unit test, it's already valuable,
because the module will have the infrastructure to write unit tests, so
chances are that more unit tests will be written in the future. And with
code coverage support, it gives more motivation to write more unit
tests.

--
Sébastien