[Zope3-dev] Re: copied doctest in z3.zope3recipes for Windows support

Martijn Faassen faassen at startifact.com
Thu Aug 16 09:35:14 EDT 2007


Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Martijn Faassen wrote:
>> I don't have any Windows knowledge, so my ability to review Roger's 
>> changes to add (much needed!) windows support to z3.zope3recipes is 
>> limited.
>>
>> I do however notice that an entire doctest was more or less copied 
>> verbatim: README.txt got copied to WINDOWS.txt. The Windows version has 
>> some changes, and a few additions, but it's almost exactly the same.
>>
>> Now if these were unit tests this would be less problematic, but this is 
>> a document as well, and as a result we now have two virtually identical 
>> documents to maintain. That seems wrong.
> 
> I don't understand that. Having to maintain duplicate unit tests or
> duplicate documents sounds like the exact same amount of duplicate work
> and problems to me. Why do you consider duplicate documents to be more
> problematic?

Oh, I didn't mean to say that it isn't problematic at all. Duplicate 
unit tests suck from a maintenance point of view, but duplicate tests 
*and* duplicate documentation suck even more from a maintenance point of 
view. :)

Duplicate unit tests are probably somewhat easier to refactor away 
(using inheritance).

Not that I'm advocating the use of non-doctests - I like doctests.

Regards,

Martijn



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