Test Suite

[DTW-Thalion]

@triplef, @gcasa, @davidchisnall would it be helpful if my team provided the tests we're building around libs-corebase for unit testing?

If so, do you need them each added as incremental per-class PRs, or can I package it up as one big test suite? Note some classes (CFSocket, CFRunLoop, CFDateFromatter/CFLocale/CFCalendar, CFXMLParser) are harder to test deterministically, but we'll give it our best shot.

What do you need from us for Copyright assignment / licensing purposes - I've just been handing back bug fixes to this point, but I expect the requirements will change given this is greenfield work.

[triplef]

Yes please, I think better tests for CoreBase would be great.

@HendrikHuebner was also going to look into running the tests as part of the GitHub Actions workflow, though I’m not sure if the current tests can even be expected to pass.

[DTW-Thalion]

I will add them one PR at a time to make review easier then.

[DTW-Thalion]

I started to add tests, but with a number of bug fixes pending review I am going to pause until those can be reviewed and processed before going full tilt into the tests.

[HendrikHuebner]

@triplef I'll look into the tests on Friday. For now, I think we should be able to merge some of the bug fix PRs already. There are some really, really bad bugs in this repository and I've only looked at a couple of PRs yet.

[triplef]

Unfortunately I think @stefanbidi is no longer actively maintaining this repo. @fredkiefer would you be able to merge those PRs, and/or could you give @HendrikHuebner permissions to do so?

[fredkiefer]

@triplef I am away for the weekend, but I hope to have time to look into these next week. If somebody already reviews the changes before that, great. Then I will only have to merge things. If development picks up on this repository @gcasa should try to appoint an active maintainer.

[stefanbidi]

Unfortunately I think @stefanbidi is no longer actively maintaining this repo. @fredkiefer would you be able to merge those PRs, and/or could you give @HendrikHuebner permissions to do so?

I still get the emails, but, unfortunately, I really don't have time. I can still provide information about design (or lack thereof) choices and why something was done a particular way.

One thing I can say is that when I stopped committing to CoreBase, it was still very much a work-in-progress / proof-of-concept project. Some classes are unfinished and others completely untested, such as CFAttributeString and CFPropertyList (I saw some PRs for those). My primary goal at the time was to have the testsuite pass on MacOS first so that there was something to develop against. I would argue that any new tests must, first and foremost, pass on MacOS, and no tests should rely on the internals of CoreBase. Unfortunately, I never had access to a Mac, so I relied on others on the list to run the tests for development, that meant, I could only write tests against the developer documentation.

[DTW-Thalion]

@stefanbidi like you I can only write tests against the developer documentation as we are a Linux/X86 shop.

So from your comments, is it worth it for me to develop tests against documentation or should I leave that to someone on MacOS who has an interest?

[stefanbidi]

In my opinion, writing tests is always a worthwhile endeavor. Since this project's primary goal is to create a compatibility layer, we would need someone to run the tests against CoreFoundation on MacOS before approving them. Finding someone to run the tests on MacOS was never a problem back when I started the project, though.

[DTW-Thalion]

Fair enough. Once this batch of PRs is merged in and closed, then I will continue putting together the tests - with the MacOS caveat understood.