[racket-dev] [racket] Disable/Enable Tests

Matthias wrote:

> I see two sequences: 
> 
> -below ;; disables up to 
> 
> -above ;; here; disables up to -below and re-enables tests 
> 
> or 
> 
> -above ;; disables everything up to here and enables tests up to 
> 
> -below ;; here; disables tests below. 
> 
> Anything else? -- Matthias

Those are probably the only REASONABLE sequences, but novice programmers will always find unreasonable ways to do it -- and those are the students I'm most worried about.

To reduce the space of possible mistakes, I'm sorta leaning towards a (with-tests-disabled ...) macro that cannot be nested.

Although as various people have pointed out, a typical workflow is more likely to ENABLE tests for a particular part of the program than to DISABLE tests for a particular part of the program.  We could address this by disabling check-expect by default, and providing a (with-tests-enabled ...) macro... but that would seriously break backwards compatibility for hundreds of teachers.

Robby wrote:
> If that's correct, then I think we have two better routes to pursue:
> 
>  - multi-file programs

I'm all in favor: I've been requesting a useful "require" in student languages for years.  I presume you don't work in a parent file until its children have all passed their test cases, so that helps a bit.  Do you then automatically disable tests in any file that's "require"d?  If so, there's no easy way to "run all the test cases for all the functions in this program"; if not, I don't see how it addresses the problem.

>  - better support in the GUI for showing us only some of the test
> results (perhaps something to focus in on test cases that test
> specific functions or something like that).

Yes, that would be nice too, if we can come up with a UI that's both suitably minimal and suitably usable.


Stephen Bloch
sbloch at adelphi.edu