Author: Mike Hearn 2011-07-30 11:49:04
Published on: 2011-07-30T11:49:04+00:00
The author of the context has been working on open source projects for over 10 years and shares some thoughts on contributing to such projects. They claim that despite the existence of certain dynamics, they have never seen it seriously kill a project. The author believes that people who start out with features often stick around and become core contributors. According to the author, unit tests are critical for the success of open-source projects. They suggest paying down the bug debt by insisting that anyone who touches a piece of code introduces tests, whether it be for new features or refactorings. The author recommends seeding the test suite with a small number of simple tests for each part to make it easier for people to add more tests. The author also emphasizes that most complex projects need some unit testing infrastructure to assist.In conclusion, the author suggests that a good start for big test suites is a manually written test plan that walks through the application's features. Insisting that a patch be signed off as passing the test plan is a good way to avoid gigantic breakages from cold start at the cost of slowing down development. The author admits to not always following their own advice and usually ends up regretting it.
Updated on: 2023-05-26T19:41:43.282548+00:00