Mailing-List: contact dev-help@couchdb.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: dev@couchdb.apache.org
Received-SPF: pass (nike.apache.org: domain of paul.joseph.davis@gmail.com
 designates 74.125.83.52 as permitted sender)
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
        d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
        h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id:subject:to
         :content-type:content-transfer-encoding;
        b=xqQJToxf/kkreKl9RCBNKG1gVYjf145dSE9PyvhDWhvcbmpMPJeCkBzrVYtx9kfvT0
         0+Qr2/R5fMQPdFTjVS25NUQlq6uB4WxTApytYqlZoKVvP6QQCj7yOZxoXy5P5joAlGE9
         bd3HhB2rUJYkFbFyGbbfd6fEGsqJdNCe4BtRc=
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <700C5F25-8235-4EFA-A3AE-5C330F5FE394@apache.org>
References: <2733FAEB-FB2C-4CFF-A9B6-A60850F447ED@me.com>
 <0EFE0CFF-7709-406C-A493-8C2426E3B663@apache.org>
	<8BAB170F-9899-400B-B63A-C2D143B7C483@me.com>
 <2B6DCE36-2A49-4E3D-BC51-5AE2BDF01F03@apache.org>
	<471B3C67-DB76-45E7-8E74-C498AD653D1D@me.com>
 <A489E5AE-7E2B-495E-B9A9-443A8B812CCC@apache.org>
	<F36771C1-D03F-4FC4-8680-B64C7B9D06E4@me.com>
 <700C5F25-8235-4EFA-A3AE-5C330F5FE394@apache.org>
From: Paul Davis <paul.joseph.davis@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:43:21 -0400
Message-ID: <e2111bbb1003191143x70b4cc59q2f032b8e15e3c905@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Test suite blocking release
To: dev@couchdb.apache.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Jan Lehnardt <jan@apache.org> wrote:
>
> On 19 Mar 2010, at 12:50, Noah Slater wrote:
>
>>
>> On 19 Mar 2010, at 17:11, Jan Lehnardt wrote:
>>
>>> We want to test the CouchDB code, not the browser's HTTP handling.
>>
>> Sure, but as one of CouchDB's primary interfaces is the browser, it seem=
s to makes sense that we would want to test how this works. Testing from th=
e browser allows us to test for and catch problems introduced by caching, e=
tc - which is what our real world users would be running into.
>>
>> Unless I'm missing something?
>
> I fully agree, but we should have a separate browser interaction
> suite for that. The test suite is a very untypical browser client and
> doesn't really test real-world browser use-cases.
>
> Cheers
> Jan
> --

+a bajillion.

I think its important to maintain *some* tests in the browser to test
its ability to use CouchDB as a client, but we should put more work
into separating API tests and core tests.

Also, Zed Shaw has a very informative (and colorful) description of
confounding factors [1]. Its about two thirds of the way down under a
heading of "Confounding, Confounding, Confounding."

http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html