Randomness in Testing

bkearney at redhat.com bkearney at redhat.com
Thu Aug 26 10:19:12 UTC 2010


R we seeing errors because of this?

--bk

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 25, 2010, at 7:13 PM, Devan Goodwin <dgoodwin at rm-rf.ca> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Justin Harris <jharris at redhat.com> wrote:
>> All,
>>    I have seen some use of random number/name generation used in tests
>> recently and want to discuss it further here.  I am
>> going to go out on a limb and give the opinion that this is not a good
>> thing, and sets a
>> bad precedent.  I think that the real value of tests is that they are an
>> easily repeatable, consistent assessment of where
>> the code is at a certain point in time.  Tests really start to lose their
>> value when two runs of the same test on the same
>> code base can result in two different outcomes. I know that for things
>> like name generation this probably won't happen,
>> but as I said it is starting down a slippery slope, and IMHO we should
>> avoid it if possible.
>> 
>> Note that there is nothing wrong with *arbitrary* values, or values
>> determined at random and hard coded into tests - let's
>> just be sure that they are the same on subsequent runs of the same test.
>> 
>> Thoughts?
>> 
>>  - Justin
>> 
> 
> Any examples where this has or could go wrong? I can't really see the
> slippery slope here.
> 
> I find the random strings preferable to littering the code with
> hardcoded "bob"'s and "someproducts"'s that we truly don't care about.
> They just get copy pasted everywhere and often clash at some point.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Devan
> 
> 
> -- 
> Devan Goodwin <dgoodwin at rm-rf.ca>
> http://rm-rf.ca
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