development branch

[ferdis]

I think there needs to be a development branch, where ezRPG sources are pushed to and can be tested before it leaks into the master branch.

[uaktags]

created a 'devel' branch, what do you suggest for the "testing before it leaks"? Perhaps use the demo.ezrpgproject.org?

[ferdis]

Could use that, but maybe we could start writing unit tests?

[uaktags]

I know I show my ignorance alot, so I shall not change that now in declaring that I don't know how we'd go about providing unit tests, or the act of unit testing in a scope to be beneficial for a team's progress. Personally, I use two things, "Guess and Check" and to be sophisticated, FirePHP and Firebug to test all functions and debug bugs. If you have an idea on how we could set up a more systematic procedure, I'm all ears and on board.

[ferdis]

Well, unit testing will provide the ability to make sure that everything works. The test-suites can be run every time when we think that the codebase in development is stable enough. If all tests pass, we can be sure that everything works as expected and will not break other systems.

This is particulary useful when dealing with back-wards compatibility issues. Take for instance an API. There's a few defined methods, and certain documented ways in which they can be utilized. When changing an API, it's very important to test that all other functionality dependent on the API works as expected. This is where unit testing should come in: it would validate output form these methods basic on certain input dataset.

A few things in ezRPG currently won't be able to be tested, but all other things like Base_Module, DB APIs and other things can be tested. There's even a possibility to test modules themselves.