[Haskell-cafe] ANN: leancheck-v0.7.4 with providers for Tasty, Hspec and test-framework

[Rudy Matela]

Hi,

I'm glad you liked LeanCheck.  :-)

On Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:09:43 +0200, Johannes Waldmann wrote:
> Among the enumerative testing libraries,
> the "competition" is between leancheck and smallcheck.
> For, me the important differences are
> 
> Enumeration of algebraic data types (ADTs), via built-in
> serial combinators, e.g.,  cons0 Leaf \/ cons2 Branch
> 
> * leancheck enumerate by size (number of nodes in tree)
> * smallcheck enumerates by depth (longest path in tree)
> 
> I (much!) prefer "by size"
> because this delays combinatorial explosion somewhat.

Yes, size bounded enumeration is more tractable.  The combinatorial
explosion is still there, but a lot of the times much later in the
enumeration.

LeanCheck also avoids repeating tests.  SmallCheck may/will repeat tests
when testing successive "depths".

> Automated Listable/Serial instances for ADTs
> 
> * leancheck uses template-haskell
> * smallcheck uses DeriveGeneric
> 
> Here I would actually prefer DeriveGeneric.

Might I ask why the preference?

> But this certainly could be added to leancheck?

Yes it could.  I guess LeanCheck could provide a genericTiers /
defaultTiers function (of type something like `Generic a => [[a]]`) on an
optional module so that one would write:

        import Test.LeanCheck.Generic

        instance Listable MyType where
          tiers = genericTiers

Patches or GitHub pull requests are always welcome.  :-)  -- I may add
this myself if I ever get the time.

Another addition could be defining a "default" inside the Listable
typeclass itself so that one could write `data MyType = ... deriving
Listable`.  But I'm not very keen on this second option, as it would
require an extension on LeanCheck's core which is compliant with
Haskell98+Namespaces.  It would also hinder the beginner-friendliness of
reading that module.  (Or maybe there is a way to define "orphan" default
declarations for typeclasses in separate modules?)

> Oh, and leancheck does not use fancy typeclassery
> (smallcheck needs Multiparamtypeclasses and Monads
> just to declare a Serial instance)
> and it is also easier to get at the list of counterexamples.

This was intentional, I'm a fan of simple types and interfaces.  I'm glad
you liked this.

- Rudy