Re: [PATCH v4 0/2] nd/merge-quit updates

Hi Duy,

On Sat, 18 May 2019, Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy wrote:

Test cases are never perfect. But at least the good ones are "actionable", i.e. when they fail, you know there is a regression, it helps you figure out easily why it broke, and it helps you fix the regression.

Many, many test cases are bad: they break for all kinds of reasons *except* for a regression. They break because an error message was changed. They break because of timing issues. They break because somebody inserted another test case. They break because a missing prereq caused a previous test case not to run, removing a side effect on which the breaking test case relied.

Those bad test cases are very frustrating for people who actually look at them. I am one of those people.

And if I did not know delightful test suites that are populated with "good" test cases, I would not point out when a "bad" one is contributed.

So: it *is* possible to have a good test suite. Let's make ours better
than it is right now.

Thanks, Johannes