[racket-dev] teaching languages error message

On Oct 14, 2010, at 2:35 PM, Robby Findler wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Matthias Felleisen
> <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> On Oct 14, 2010, at 11:06 AM, Robby Findler wrote:
>> 
>>> No problem. That's what drdr is for! :)
>>> 
>>> But I'll go ahead and add you to the relevant test suites reporting.
>>> 
>>> You might want to try them out, just so you get a sense (they're
>>> really testing the integration of the teaching langauges into
>>> drracket, so the precise wording is incidnental; they're trying to
>>> make sure they get a beginner error and not a full language error).
>> 
>> 
>> In that case, the test might just be checking for the
>> wrong property. Shouldn't we change this, especially for
>> precise wordings of error reports? (When Guillaume takes
>> over, we'll see even more of this.)
> 
> The test should test that the error message is one that is supposed to
> come from the beginner language. I don't really see a better way to do
> that other than just to edit the messages when they change. (DrDr has
> made this process MUCH easier than it was before.)

Refactor the error message machinery into a separate file (like I did for the teachpacks) and use this single point for both raising and checking error messages. 

But I don't understand why drracket tests for error messages. When you know the right language is running can't you trust its tests? 

-- Matthias