Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Future of ExtLib

[Janne H. <ja...@hy...>]

Hi,

> which is 'triple handling', in fact worse, since the test name
> has to be written as well.. :)

Well, it depends on how many test contributors and how many tests we're 
expecting.  I'm not expecting that many, so I don't consider adding 
tests such a big problem.

> Ideally, the test.mak, mainline, and module level
> test function should be generated, not hand coded,
> that is the Makefile should generate the these things
> using a refined equivalent of 'ls test_*.ml'.

This might be doable with GNU Make's $(wildcard) and some other tricks. 
  I never tried, but it seems doable.

Then again, if I *don't* do this, the Makefile would be more 
straightforward and would even allow test contributors to write their 
own small utility modules.  If I want to use wildcards, I will also need 
a portable way to automatically make the .ml files topologically sorted.

However, as to your other suggestions, frankly, I think you're making 
the build process unnecessarily complicated.  I don't see how adding new 
tests can ever become a bottleneck.  Nor do I think it can be somehow 
unsafe (even if a couple of files need to be modified), due to O'Caml's 
strong static typing.

Anyhow.. If someone will make a more sophisticated build system in the 
future, I'm OK with that.. Just make 100% sure that it ports to Windows. 
  I noticed there's been some talk about adding path handling into 
ExtLib.  These *definitely* need to be tested on Windows to make sure 
they work as expected!

Currently my main concern though is getting more meaningful tests into 
the suite..

> test_*_<module>_*.ml
> 
> Note this implies names like
> 
> test_jh_ExtList.ml
> 
> would not be allowed, a suffix would be required.
> That could be fixed by also allowing names of that form.
> I personally think we should mandate the suffix:
> we'd better decide fast, before there are too many tests:
> CVS isn't good at file renaming .. :)

Surely you can just check if the suffix is missing and if so, 
automatically name it "untitled".

I find it perfectly OK to have more than one test in one file.  In some 
cases it allows to share some code between individual tests.  See 
test_jh_BitSet.ml for an example (bitset_of_int, etc).

As for renaming.. Grrr I wish we could use Subversion.. :)

ciao,
janne