[Dovecot] Test suite? Was [Dovecot-news] 1.0.rc21 released

[Ethan Sommer]

Silicom Web (Steffen) wrote:
> Hi Timo,
>
> Maybe a test suite next time, 
A test suite sounds like an excellent idea, which I might be interested 
in implementing. How would such a beat work.

I'd imagine a program which takes a "test case" which comes with
1. an initial mailbox
2. a series of IMAP commands to execute on the mailbox
3. a final test which has a IMAP command to run and a regular expression 
which its result should match.

I would think that non-programmers could come up with test cases given 
such a system. Even if its only used as a way to say "here, run this 
test case which shows how things are broken now" and then the test case 
is kept around to make sure there aren't any regressions in newer 
versions, I would think that such a system would be very useful.

Off the top of my head, the downsides I see are: doesn't test deliver, 
regular expressions might wind up being too specific and generate false 
failures when doing regression tests, requires knowledge of IMAP protocol.

What do people think?

--
Ethan Sommer
Systems Administrator
Gustavus Adolphus College
507-933-7042
sommere at gac.edu