* * * * *
                                        
                               Hurry up and wait
                                        
One thing about testing a regression test is that there's quite a bit of
“hurry up and wait”—I add a check, run the test and wait (Regression tests
are good for this as well) [1]. Then investigate the output and either make a
note of a potential problem (either in the configuration of the test data or
a possible bug in one of a number of components) or adjust the check (“hmmm …
on second thought, it should really be this”) and rerun the test.

Fortunately, the regression test for “Project: Sippy-Cup [2]” (runs for maybe
half an hour) isn't as long as the regression test for “Project: Wolowizard
[3]” (about 4½ hours).

[1] http://xkcd.com/303/
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2014/03/05.1
[3] http://boston.conman.org/2010/10/11.1

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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