[fpc-devel] FPCUnit as a separate project from FPC?

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 22 May 2007, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:

> Hi everybody,
> 
> Darius Blaszijk, Vincent Snijders and myself had a discussion off the
> mailing list about the possibility of moving FPCUnit out of FPC as a
> separate project.  I thought it to be important that we get the
> opinions of others as well.
> 
> In summary:
>  Darius is all for it.
>  Vincent is against it.
>  I'm on the wire, but leaning towards the move.  :-)
> 
> Some points that where raised in our discussion (please add more if I
> left some out):
> 
> * As it stands now, FPCUnit is split between two repositories. The FPC
> one and the Lazarus one. This make it really hard to submit updates.
> The FPC one must be done first otherwise it breaks the Lazarus GUI
> TestRunner (or Console TestRunner).

This is not quite correct. The only part which should be in Lazarus 
is the GUI stuff. The console testrunner can perfectly be integrated 
in FPC. (as stated by Vincent)

> * FPC versions are a issue as the release cycles is very different for
> the FPC and Lazarus projects. Apparently the FPCUnit is broken in the
> previous release of Lazarus, due to this.

This is a non-argument, it goes for all units in FPC which are used in 
Lazarus... 
 
> * Vincent likes the idea of the testing framework being part of FPC.
> One simple checkout. I think this point is moot because SubVersion
> support Externals Definitions for exactly this purpose and I think
> will actually work better than the current setup. We can link FPCUnit
> to FPC as an external link - and even link it to a specific revision
> of FPCUnit to always guarantee it pulls in a stable version of FPCUnit
> for use in FPC's test cases.

The FPC automated testsuite will move towards FPCunit. We cannot do this 
if fpcunit is a separate project, because then an external influence could 
break the whole testsuite. You'll understand that this is not acceptable. 
If it is in FPC svn, we control at least all what we need ourselves.

So from the FPC point of view this proposal is a big no-no.

What concerns LNet, it was moved out only because it was not considered
stable enough by the author. As soon as it is stable enough, it moves 
back in. Our packaging tool will depend on it. So you cannot really
use this as an argument for moving.

The best that can be done is move the console runner to the FCL,
and leave only the GUI part in Lazarus.

Michael.