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Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 11:33:24 +1000
Subject: Re: Sphinx Doctest: test the code without comparing the output.
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 2:25 AM, Luca Cerone <luca.cerone@gmail.com> wrote:
> The difference is that in that case you want to check whether the result is correct or not, because you expect a certain result.
>
> In my case, I don't know what the output is, nor care for the purpose of the tutorial. What I care is being sure that the command in the tutorial is correct, and up to date with the code.

I'd call that a smoke-test, rather than something a test
harness/engine should be doing normally. All you do is see if the
program crashes. This can be extremely useful (I smoke-test my scripts
as part of my one-key "deploy to testbox" script, saving me the
trouble of actually running anything - simple syntactic errors or
misspelled function/variable names (in languages where that's a
concept) get caught really early); but if you're using this for a
tutorial, you risk creating a breed of novice programmers who believe
their first priority is to stop the program crashing. Smoke testing is
a tool that should be used by the expert, NOT a sole check given to a
novice.

ChrisA