[Pmwiki-users] Re: Re: Request for method to let plugins execute code after stdconfig.php

[Jonathan Scott Duff]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 10:55:21PM +0200, chr at home.se wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
> 
> > Seems like there would be a use for a tool that analyzes a plugin and
> > gives a report of which variables/functions it uses/modifies.  Then
> > you could have another tool that does this for pmwiki and all of the
> > plugins and identifies potential points of conflict.
> 
> Hmm... you mean like a debugging tool that checks which variables exist 
> (and what they contain) before a plugin is executed, and then compares 
> this to the state afterwards?

I was actually thinking of static analysis of the source files, but a
dynamic approach like you just described would be better as it would
catch all of the various weird things that programmers can do with
eval and the like.

> That might be useful... isn't there a name for that kind of tool?
> instrument-something?

Probably but the name escapes me at the moment.

> > It's not so much work if you have a suite of regression tests setup so
> > that you can see if anything has changed. Then you only have to do the
> > manual inspection and modification if/when a regression test fails.
> 
> I wish I had those tests set up though... have you seen any links to tools 
> that lets you do unit tests of php-scripts (i.e. like plugins for pmwiki).
> 
> For the version of 'upload.php' I've done, I could really use a serious 
> testing suite.

I have seen unit tests for markup in pmwiki2. :-)

-Scott
-- 
Jonathan Scott Duff
duff at pobox.com