[MO-java-dev] Why is it so complicated???

[Tim <ma...@po...>]

Guys - I've always used an internal connextra version of the mock objects
stuff. Now I'm no longer with connextra I thought I would try using the
official release and see if I could maybe integrate some stuff... but why is
it so complicated?

Its certainly not easy to just pull this down in eclipse and use it... there
are jdk versions to worry about (yes I know this is an issue but only for
very advanced stuff - surely?), and the directory structures don't easily
map into the eclipse view of the world (I guess you guys all use some
complicated scheme in intellij? But why not use eclipse as the lowest common
denominator? I want a head version in my environment that I can easily apply
fixes to and check in - I have access to lots of code and ideas, but it has
to be simple for me to make modifications with an onsite partner and put
them back in (without lots of messing around - this is why lots of good
stuff got left out, because for ages connextra used visual age and it was
too much work to put stuff back in, so we just didn't).

Having played with the dynamic mock stuff I am suprised that all the people
that I've seen post messages about using it - haven't complained about the
horrible error messages (the original non dynamic version went to great
pains to provide useful error messages that would help you quickly locate an
error and fix it - see my paper A Plea for Assert Equals). I'm also suprised
no-one has needed an UnorderedExpectationList... I think this is really an
indication that people just haven't used this stuff in anger, or seen how it
works at connextra to know that there is much better.

Anyway - all this aside, I'm a bit perturbed by all this complication and
would like to try creating a whole new Project that takes the best from both
worlds. With the dynamic stuff you can drastically cut down the hard coded
mocks you need (e.g. httpServletRequest can use a dynamic version) although
some clases that don't have interfaces (like stream stuff) will need hard
coded versions. Plus there are some useful helper classes that are kicking
around in the connextra code base that they have agreed to donate.

So I'm thinking maybe having a mockobjects-java-dynamic (or
mockobjects2-java?) module with a simple src subdirectory and just pulling
all of the relevent pieces in one by one as I need them (I am doing some
work for a company called e2x and we are using the mocks in anger - with
myself and john nolan on site to supervise their usage). If I can do this -
and get a good starting point, then everyone can jump in and do all the
magic that you normally do to make it all open-sourcy.

what do you think? We have to make life simpler for ourselves and stop
having to answer the "method x is not implemented in that mock here's my
patch" hard work that seems to be going on at the moment.

Tim
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