[racket] Thoughts on Overeasy

20 minutes ago, Noel Welsh wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 6:02 AM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> > This is exactly what I have in the future of my tester ("have" not
> > in a complete vaporware sense, but as stuff that's already working
> > and committed in my repo).  You basically get a macro that defines
> > new arrow types
> >
> >  (define-test-arrow-rule (X =output> Y)
> >    ...)
> >
> > and this macro set up the output redirection before the test, and
> > checking the collected output after it.
> 
> Do (these) arrows compose?

Yes, of course.


> IIUC test arrows conflate getting output to test, and performing a
> check on the output. [...]
> 
> (test
>   (log-message "a string")
>   =output+value=>
>   (list (void) "a string"))
> 
> The later is shorter but more opaque, and the number of arrows you
> need grow exponentially.

And therefore I'd consider that a non-solution.  IIRC, the main tricky
bit in the definition of `=output>' was making it so that both

  (test foo => bar =output> blah)
  (test foo =output> blah => bar)

work.


> I'm certainly happy to have Racket extended with before/after/around
> forms that are conveniences for dynamic-wind. Us humble test package
> authors aren't really in a position to do this, however.

Yeah, that's a valid point.  If it's the *only* one for adding a
before/after to a testing facility, then the only problem I have with
it is in making it easier for the core developers to not face the
problem.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!