[Freeipa-devel] [PATCHES] 0094-0099 Make Fuzzy objects available for the whole ipatests module

[Rob Crittenden]

Petr Viktorin wrote:
> On 09/13/2013 04:12 PM, Tomas Babej wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The following patches move and extend the functionality of Fuzzy
>> objects. This is necessary to use them from within integration tests.
>
> -1 to the idea.
> I'm not a fan of the Fuzzy objects; they basically exist so that you can
> use regex matching in the Declarative tests.
> As you've probably noticed Fuzzy is quite specific to the framework and
> its test suite -- see the strict bytes/unicode separation and the amount
> of changes it takes to tear them out.
>
> I'm also not a fan of having a generic "Match anything using some rules"
> object where everybody adds behavior specific to their use case. Each
> addition increases the complexity and number of corner cases, and the
> complete intended functionality can never be achieved.
>
> Using regular expressions directly should actually be easier and less
> error-prone in most cases.
> If you disagree, I'd like to see your use case.

I'm not sure what the objection is, Fuzzy is just an abstraction. It 
lets one do in-line regex which is the reason it was introduced 
(initially for uid and gid because they are non-deterministic).

Replacing it would either a) replicate its functionality almost 
completely or b) spread duplicate regex code all over the place.

That isn't to say that Fuzzy isn't being abused, but that is also the 
responsibility of the reviewers to be strict about.

rob