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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

Well

Unit tests are great in js/python/ruby because of the nature of the language

In C/C++ for example it's much more involved. In java it's bearable because of Eclipse/Netbeans facilitating lots of things.

But take for example the Linux kernel development: - There are two widely used "IDEs": VIM and Emacs, pick one

- Patches sent over email (yeah, please try doing a pull request to see what happens)

- No unit tests

- limited use of debuging tools, mostly printk

And still is one of the most solid and used softwares out there

Tools and techniques (unit tests, CI, etc) are good if you want to have several developers "with their hands on the code at the same time" and you have limited trust on them

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Patches sent over email (yeah, please try doing a pull request to see what happens)

Interesting, since git is used by kernel devs this can't just be a convenience thing. Why are they so adamant about putting the patch in the email?

Because you can directly review and discuss the changes inline without the need to leave your mua. There is also no need to setup a public git repository and check all your changes in your repository before pulling.

git format-patch, git send-email as well as git am work also really well and simplify the patch creation/integration. This is basically the send a pull request from github but without the need to depend on github.

I've worked in a couple of companies that did this. We had the following flow and it worked great:

Task assigned to developer via email, developer takes current release tar from ftp and untars, does work, creates patch, forwards patch to colleague to review, forwards to release manager who integrates all incoming patches, drops into a new tar, releases to ftp.

Some of this was automated with a few hundred lines of perl. The rest was on a whiteboard.

Interesting

They could skip the ftp part, because git saves bandwidth

Still, this is a good way to do the work

They use scp now rather than ftp. They don't use git because it's too complicated for contractors to handle.

I like unit tests and CI even with excellent developers who I trust utterly. We just have the computer automatically check everything we might check manually. Or that we worry that we might forget about.

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