What's next for abc-classroom - test suite

[lwasser]

abc-classroom has a growing user base including the instructors at Earth Lab / CU Boulder who use it in classes. THe next step for abc-classroom is to refactor and rebuild the test suite. There are several issues and open pr's that begin to address this test suite revamp.

At a high level, the test suite should be object oriented. This will allow for the resuse of mocks where they make sense to avoid redundant fixture calls and code. The test suite could also be improved via the use of cassettes that store API responses and can be updated making the test suite better able to dynamically update as API returns change over time.

You will see some exploration into mocking and patching in the open pr's with many notes about what works and doesn't work. Ideally a developer with a strong handle on test suites, mocks and patching (an art which needs to be applied carefully so the test suite isn't brittle), and object oriented approaches could really help abc-classroom get to a stable release. the current release works and is being used. But it's not quite stable yet given the lack of a solid test suite that supports api calls.

Once the test suite is developed and robust, the next effort should be better error handling and user messaging. there are several open issues related to this as well.

please reach out here if you are interested in support abc-classroom in the future. We think this is a great tool. The entire maintainer team however is transitioning to new efforts at this point in time.