STUBS method

[duskhacker]

Ok, now that we've got the *Times thing out of the way, the other thing I really miss is a STUBS method. I'd like to discuss this first with you before I go and try to contribute it, maybe cut down on the back-and-forth a bit.

When I've used other mocking frameworks, I use

• A "STUBS" method to indicate "This test does not care that this method is called, it is simply here to allow the code under test to run"
• A "EXPECTS" method to indicate "This is the expectation that this test cares about"

Would you be open to that addition?

[dsymonds]

STUBS is just EXPECT + AnyTimes, is it not?

[duskhacker]

It's more like EXPECTS.Call(gomock.Any()).Anytimes()

[duskhacker]

In fact, the above is pretty much what I'm using now, but IMHO, STUBS would make tests clearer.

[dsymonds]

Yeah, that's what I meant. So it'd be just syntactic sugar for that?

[duskhacker]

Yes, no arg checking, no checking of number of calls.

[duskhacker]

And to be clear, yes, it's syntactic sugar.

[dsymonds]

My initial instinct is to say no. I don't want to complicate the API for something that is relatively simple to do already. People have been using gomock to produce stubs for years without issue.

But I'll have a think about it.

[duskhacker]

Ok, I respect that. I just want to add that I think it would make scanning through tests easier and clearer if STUBS was available, and people coming from other mocking frameworks might miss it like I do. I'll of course defer to your decision when you've thought through it.

[dsymonds]

I think I'd prefer to leave things as they are. Thanks anyway.