Re: A "why TAP?" manifesto (was: [PATCH] test-lib: have --immediate emit valid TAP on failure)

From: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Date: Mar 24, 2022, 21:57 UTC
Message-ID: <YjzpYic+QaOpqolE@nand.local>
In-Reply-To: <220324.8635j7nyvw.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>

On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 02:48:42PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> > The commit message is strong on the what, very strong in giving verbose
> > output that might or might not clarify the intention, and a little weak in
> > the why and the greater context.
>
> I thought "so that it emits valid TAP" was sufficiently
> self-explaining. I.e. we emit this machine-readable format, but in this
> edge case our output is invalid TAP, now it's valid.

I agree; if the justification is "something we use not-infrequently is broken" and the rest is "and this patch un-breaks it", I do not think we should devote much space to justifying why we use that thing in the first place.

Our TAP output meets the bar (at least for me, personally) of not needing to be rehashed anytime we change it, so I don't have any complaints about Ævar's patch message here.

Of course, we should be careful to avoid following that guidance _too_ much, since if it leaves us in a spot where we never question any past decisions, then I think we have gone too far.

Thanks, Taylor