Debugging doctests (was Re: [Zope3-dev] Re: Windows eggs)

[Stephan Richter]

On Monday 16 July 2007 08:44, Jim Fulton wrote:
> For me, post-mortem debugging or using set_trace is almost always  
> good enough. On those occasions where I really need to step through a  
> series of example, It's straightforward to convert them to a single  
> example.

Me too. Actually I only use set_trace() and I always quickly find what I need.

> In general I find well-written doctests easier to debug because they  
> have documentation and the documentation makes their intent clearer.

I agree.

> Well written doctests will have documentation even when they aren't  
> intended as documentation.  Of course, it could be argued that well  
> written classic tests will have comments.  I think that doctest  
> facilitates writing good tests, as I have see far more well-written  
> doctests than I've seen well-written classic tests.

Amen. :-) I think we can say this about ourselves too. We (Zope 3 developers) 
have written much better tests since we started using doctests.

Regards,
Stephan
-- 
Stephan Richter
CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student)
Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training