[qmtest] RFE concerning 'Extension' class

[Mark Mitchell]

On Fri, 2004-01-16 at 14:21, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Stefan Seefeld <seefeld at sympatico.ca> writes:
> 
> > hi there,
> >
> > I'd like to suggest some enhancements to the Extension class which
> > (IMO) makes its use a bit cleaner.
> >
> > Right now each Extension class derivative has to declare its arguments
> > within the class variable 'arguments', being a list of 'Fields'. These
> > Fields are self-documenting, as they contain their name, description,
> > and default value.
> >
> > In the Extension constructor this list is mapped to actual instance
> > variables for convenient use, and the values are (possibly) overridden
> > by arguments passed to the constructor.
> >
> > I'd suggest to create a metaclass for the 'Extension' type that handles
> > this mapping in its '__init__' method.
> 
> This is a good idea. 

I think it's an elegant design, and if we could do it from scratch now,
it would be a good approach.

That said, I'm not sure yet if it merits a redesigning this working
interface, though.  

Is this the most valuable thing we could do to QMTest right now?

I suspect that we would be better off by adding new useful test classes,
or by making documentation improvements, as several have suggested. 
Yes, a more elegant system would be easier to document -- but would it
be *that* much easier to document?  And what about having to keep the
backwards-compatibility code around for the indefinite future?

-- 
Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery.com>
CodeSourcery, LLC