On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 12:05 PM, Stas Malyshev <smalyshev(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
"Test Plan" is required.
Sounds like a good practice to me. Worst case scenario, type "I didn't
test
this patch at all."
I think it's not a good idea, as it trains people to do the opposite
thing of what it's intended to train people for. I.e. "mandatory, but
put 'whatever' there" IMHO is worse than non-mandatory but supported by
common consensus. If we're setting up a new system, we shouldn't set it up
so we constantly work around it.
I don't agree, or I don't understand, "Test Plan:" is fantastic and
I've
wanted it in commit messages for years. Thinking about how to test is
essential to writing good code, and a reminder to express your thought
process is invaluable, whether it's "qunit tests now pass", or "it
should
no longer break when you visit the special page", or "obvious fix".
Expecting reviewers to be Nostradamus and infer what the engineer might
have thought about testing, or whether the engineer tested at all, is dumb.
If someone writes "Test Plan: whatever", they'll get -1s until they respect
reviewers enough to write "Test Plan: trivial untested fix in an area that
lacks tests".
In the last week my instance crashed on two checkins that were +2'd but
never run; both useful improvements to MediaWiki-Vagrant roles that looked
completely legit. I appreciate people writing needed code and others
reviewing it promptly, but typing: "Test Plan: I didn't test this patch at
all" might have saved me 20 minutes of wondering where I screwed up,
re-provisioning, hunting down log files, etc. (Both are fixed BTW.)
Can/will we add a "Test Plan: " line to the default commit.message
<https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Configuration#idp25045696>
just to get developers in the mood and encourage a standard format?
Independent of Differential and separately from whether we make it
mandatory. It seems developers have to do
git config --global commit.template ~/path/to/better/git_commit.message
, but we could put the file in a MediaWiki project like core
Regards,
--
=S Page WMF Tech writer