Re: [SMW-devel] Code quality, and how to improve it

[Lane, R. <Rya...@oc...>]

> So this gives us four partly independent activities to do:
> (1) Create and run Selenium tests.
> (2) Create and run PHPUnit tests
> (3) Review existing code and extend/augment documentation 
> where unclear.
> (4) Review new commits.
> 
> (3) is before (2), so we do not yet have to worry about MW 
> not having full 
> support for PHPUnit yet. For (1), we should probably wait 
> until MW has figured 
> out how to best do this, but it would be possible to collect 
> interesting tests 
> now already: Instead of recording a Selenium script, one 
> could also write a 
> wiki page to describe the test to humans, so that manual 
> tests are possible. 
> We can use SWM to record for which version/revision of SMW a 
> given test has 
> been verified last time. Such informal test descriptions 
> could then be moved 
> to Selenium when ready. For (4), I am still wondering how to 
> get rights for 
> actually doing this on mediawiki.org's Special:Code? I think 
> I cannot change 
> anything there to mark commits with a status.
> 

I believe MediaWiki's support for PHPUnit is pretty much ready to use.

As for Selenium support, people can start writing Selenium scripts right
now. You can use Selenium IDE , and export the scripts as PHP, and add them
to SVN for your extensions. At some point in time we'll want to integrate
those scripts with MediaWiki's Selenium framework, when it is ready for
general use. Changing the scripts to work with the framework shouldn't be
difficult, and it is possible to get benefit from Selenium scripts
immediately.

Writing a set of manual tests in a wiki isn't a bad idea either. People
familiar with Selenium can use those to write scripts for others.

Respectfully,

Ryan Lane