I don't like these limitations either, but testing is an integral part of development, and we need to code in a way that facilitates testing.
This is especially true for e.g. static methods, but here we'd be renouncing to a possibly useful feature.
Why do methods ever "have" to be final?
If you want to make sure that any subclass won't ever change the implementation of a method, and thus all callers know what to expect from calling a final method. I see finals as a sort of safeguard to help write better code, like e.g. typehints.
That would be a nice solution if it works well. If someone wants to volunteer to try to get it working, then we won't need to have this discussion. But until someone does, the question remains.
IMHO this would be a perfect compromise. I've filed T231419 for that, and I also think that before discussing any further, we should try to see if we can install that tool.
Il giorno mer 28 ago 2019 alle ore 09:30 Aryeh Gregor ayg@aryeh.name ha scritto:
On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 11:53 PM Daimona daimona.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Personally, I don't like these limitations in PHPUnit and the like. IMHO, they should never be a reason for changing good code.
I don't like these limitations either, but testing is an integral part of development, and we need to code in a way that facilitates testing. In each case we need to make a cost-benefit analysis about what's best for the project. The question is whether there's any benefit to using final that outweighs the cost to testability.
And sometimes, methods have to be final.
Why do methods ever "have" to be final? Someone who installs an extension accepts that they get whatever behavior changes the extension makes. If the extension does something we don't want it to, it will either work or not, but that's the extension's problem.
This is exactly the question: why do we ever want methods to be final? Is there actually any benefit that outweighs the problems for testing?
Anyway, some time ago I came across [1], which allows mocking final
methods
and classes. IIRC, it does that by removing the `final` keywords from the tokenized PHP code. I don't know how well it works, nor if it could
degrade
performance, but if it doesn't we could bring it in via composer.
That would be a nice solution if it works well. If someone wants to volunteer to try to get it working, then we won't need to have this discussion. But until someone does, the question remains.
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