LazyTest: tests for developers too lazy to write them

MIT license as usual

I don't mind writing documentation that includes examples, but I don't really like to write tests. LazyTest finds bash fenced code regions in Markdown files and interprets them as examples that should produce the demonstrated output. For example:

$ seq 4                 # command with output below
1
2
3
4

This works by compiling Markdown files into bash scripts that contain the assertions.

Using LazyTest

$ ./lazytest *.md > tests.sh
$ bash tests.sh && echo 'woohoo, everything works'

You can write shell script snippets that aren't tests by using sh instead of bash; for example:

# this code region won't turn into a test
$ false
woohoo, you ran /bin/false!

How to write examples

LazyTest is pretty good at figuring out what's a command and what's expected-output, but there are a few things that can throw it off. First, things that work:

Multiline strings

These work most of the time because lazytest reads until it has an even number of them.

$ echo 'multiline single-
quoted strings' | perl -lne 'print "$_ FTW"'
multiline single- FTW
quoted strings FTW

$ echo "that's confusing"
that's confusing

$ echo "it's also possible
to have multiline double quoted strings"
it's also possible
to have multiline double quoted strings

Line continuations

Heredocs

You can have a heredoc and lazytest will figure out where it ends:

$ cat <<EOF
this
is
a
test
EOF
this
is
a
test

`/dev/null` on stdin

$ wc -l
0

Conditionals

Anything you put into a lazytest code block will appear verbatim in the compiled script. This makes it possible to conditionalize execution for things; for example:

# Skip over the following stuff because it's lame
if false; then

$ echo hi               # a noncompliant echo
nope

fi

Similarly, you can use for-loops:

for i in `seq 100`; do

$ echo the same test
the same test

done

spencertipping/lazytest