Re: Trunk still not open

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 14.03.2014 17:29, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Not necessarily.  You will know how to test a function, but without
> some overview docs, you will have no idea how to test a complex
> feature that is built of several functions and variables, and relies
> on some internals on top of that.  Also, internal functions many times
> don't have doc strings -- a practice that Emacs development accepts as
> valid.

If I'm a "testing engineer" in a separate department from people who 
wrote the code (not the case here), then yes, I might like an overview 
document to understand the code, or write tests for it.

"No code without tests" policy assumes that someone actually can write 
the code changes, and they need to supply the tests that fail without that.

I.e. you both seem to be referring to some different kind of testing: 
non-automated, performed by third parties?

If I write automated tests, I'll have to get familiar with the code 
either way, and it's often its own best documentation.

> As another example, testing of infrastructure and C code using just
> the doc strings is an impossible task.  E.g., in what doc string will
> you find what a 'display' property is supposed to do?

Sure, some introductory/overview manual can be good, or even a detailed 
one, for C-level features.

Lisp packages often put the intro or overview in the Commentary, though.