Re: [PATCH 2/2] receive-pack: support push-to-checkout hook

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 2, 2014, 17:00 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqppc2m1fz.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.1412021744490.13845@s15462909.onlinehome-server.info>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

>> Not really.  You need to remember that we write tests not to show
>> off the new shiny, but to protect essential invariants from being
>> broken by careless others attempting to rewrite the implementation
>> in the future.
>
> Fair enough. You are the boss.
>
> I am not, therefore it does not matter what I think,

It is not that it does not matter because you are not the boss; it is just that when you are wrong, you are wrong.

You said in your response to Michael:

    the difference between the "touch yep" ... and
    the test originally suggested is ...
    not the extent to which the new code is actually verified.

If your "verification" is based on "faith", you are correct. You may be "verifying" the code to the right extent, i.e. "Yes, what I wrote is actually run, and I write perfect code every time, so what it does must be correct, as long as it gets run".

But I do not have faith in people who will be touching the relevant code in the future; "Yes, it is triggered" is far from satisfactory without faith like yours in the code being tested.

I actually do not have much faith in what I write myself ;-). That is why we have tests.