TL;DR: I don't need it, and you probably don't either. I'll explain below.
As we know of course, Go ships with a built-in unit testing framework i...
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My philosophy is to not introduce any external dependency until I absolutely need it. Creating a small assertion helper function that you have total control over is better than pulling in a dependency that you have no control over. Until the project absolutely needs all the extra features that an external dependency provides, it's more maintainable to roll out simple functionality yourself.
I wrote my assertions too until I moved to another project and had to copy-paste them all. Testify is great, it's worth it.
Why would you care about adding an external dependency for your tests? They won't even be included in your runtime binaries.
The point is that your own implementation will cover a lot of test cases (99%) but when you get to that 1%, then you have to add the external dependency anyway so all the work you did before goes in the trash.
It's not just about how heavy the runtime binary is, it's also about how much third-party code I am depending on. By introducing a new dependency, I am now relying on a third party's unpaid efforts. If I can avoid that with less than 15 lines of code, why shouldn't I?
Sure, I might end up needing more advanced assertion libraries. But why borrow problems from the future? If I need something in the future, I'll use it. And nothing is going to go 'in the trash' because I'll just keep using my own assertion whenever possible anyway.
You say "By introducing a new dependency, I am now relying on a third party's unpaid efforts."
which effort? What fact do you have to back it up? Maybe I am wrong, but you make strong points and they need proof.
What facts and proof are you looking for? When you use an OSS library maintained by someone, that person has to spend some effort to maintain the project–writing code, triaging issues, responding to queries, doing code reviews, tagging releases. The OSS doesn't magically maintain itself out of thin air.
So you don’t rely on OSS at all?
Of course I rely on OSS, as almost every developer does. But I want to be able to pick and choose which OSS I rely on and I want to reduce my dependency surface area as much as possible. If I can get 90% of the benefit of a third-party library with less than 15 lines of hand-written code that I know like the back of my hand, why shouldn't I just do that?
So, you don't use third-party assertion library just because you wrote new one by yourself
I thought the article was about using
fmt.Println + // want: whateverBut no 🤔
it is a not true that assert.Equal cover 99% of Go unit testing needs! Let's compare it with for example "assert.Panic": only 1% test case used "assert.Panic"...
However 99% of the projects need "assert.Panic", evens for 1 or 2 calls (similar to other assert.True, assert.Nil, assert.Empty...)
when your co-worker comes to your project and need "assert.Panic". He/She will conveniently uses the testify/assert and throw away your "home made" assert. As 99% Go project needs "assert.Panic, assert.True.." There 99% probability that your assert will be throw away...
your point of reducing dependency surface is reasonable but choose assert library to show case the point is just a bad example
Dunno what to tell you. The Go standard library's
testingpackage doesn't provide an assertion for 'panic', and I've never needed one. Or in other words, I've never needed to trigger or test for a panic. It's a crash condition; testing for it is imho missing the point. But I have found that almost every useful assertion can be expressed in terms of comparing two strrings, which covers my 99% cases.If your application have never call the "panic()" function then it is fine, you don't need "assert.panic()" in the tests.
However if your app calls panic() somewhere, and you didn't have test to cover this call then you are missing the test, it shows that Your tests covered only the "happy path", you didn't write test for the edge cases which make your application call the panic function and crashed.
Most of my application call panic somewhere and I have test to cover this case. The test make sure that when the situation happen, then the application would panic instead of running in an unpredictable condition.
No, I don't directly call
Panic()in my applications and I don't think it's a good practice to do it either in application code. Panic should immediately crash the app; the fact that some libraries catch panics is a design decision that they made and it is their responsibility to ensure they are using it safely. I have no control over that and I don't test code I don't control.If I made a library that caught panics, then I would test it as such.
it seems that you wrote a tiny testify by yourself. why?
By writing your own thing instead of using well-known, quasi-standard way of testing, you also hurt uniformity and ease of collaboration since people have to learn your API instead.
So just to clarify, are you making both arguments at the same time:
?