Re: How you can help

["Avdi Grimm" <avdi@avdi.org>]

A few points, from someone with a decent amount of testing background:

* As someone who has contributed to OS projects, the lack of a
pre-existing set of regression tests in org-mode is actually *the*
most significant blocker to my getting involved in org-mode
development.  I do all of my coding - both professional and personal -
in the context of tests, and not having the existing framework means
that before I can start working on new features I first need to spend
time yak-shaving on testing infrastructure.

*  I think there's a lot of over-thinking going on here.  Here's the
test-first coding discipline in a nutshell:
   1. Identify a problem/missing feature.
   2. Write a test (possibly using a unit-testing framework to help)
which will pass when the bug has been fixed or feature added. This can
be as simple as calling a function and validating its return value.
   3.  Run the test.  Verify it FAILS.
   4. Write code to make the test PASS.
   5. Refactor, if you introduced any code duplication in step 4.
   6. Run all the tests, to make sure you didn't break anything else.
   7. Commit.

If someone would be so kind as to identify a small bug or feature, I
would be happy to demonstrate this workflow in the form of code, time
permitting.

-- 
Avdi

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