Metatest 0.1.0

[Jonathan Fine]

Kay Schluehr wrote:
> On 19 Sep., 01:30, Jonathan Fine <jf... at pytex.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>there is no fundamental reason why it can't be separated from
>>>eeconsole.py.
>>
>>OK.  That might be a good idea.
> 
> 
> Ironically, I liked the idea of having more expressive assert
> statements - a discussion you brought up. But this requires either
> syntcatical analysis in the general case ( EE and assert magic ) some
> particular API ( Ben Finney ) or a somewhat restricted, but fully
> embedded, domain specific language ( Metatest ).
> 
> Here is what I got after an hour of hacking and filtering assert.
> Additional remarks are in line comments:

<snip>

Thank you for doing this coding, and providing an example of its use.

It seems to me that /writing the tests/ and /running the tests/ are two 
distinct, although linked, matters.  When programming, we are interested 
in running the tests.  When designing, we are interested in writing the 
tests.  And when looking at someone else's modules, we are interested in 
/reading the tests/.

Both Metatest and EasyExtend show that we have some freedom in how we 
choose to write our tests.

What I am interested in doing is developing and promoting a /language 
for writing tests/.  This has both a formal side and also conventions 
and examples of its use.  We would, of course, like that language to be 
Pythonic (if not exactly Python, although that would be a distinct 
advantage).

I think we can do this without having to think too much about 
implementation (although it would be useful to have experience of using 
the language).

I also think that some sort of 'filter' between the user and the Python 
commmand line would be useful.  GNU readline is a simple, and effective, 
example of the sort of thing I have in mind.

Thank you for discussing this with me, Kay and Ben.

-- 
Jonathan