[gwking]

I’ve idly wondered about this sort of thing quite a bit. The next step would seem to be taking a project’s implementation dependent tests, converting them to an independent format and verifying them against the original project, then conducting the port.

[skissane]

Give coding agent some software. Ask it to write tests that maximise code coverage (source coverage if you have source code; if not, binary coverage). Consider using concolic fuzzing. Then give another agent the generated test suite, and ask it to write an implementation that passes. Automated software cloning. I wonder what results you might get?

[gaigalas]

> Ask it to write tests that maximise code coverage

That is significantly harder to do than writing an implementation from tests, especially for codebases that previously didn't have any testing infrastructure.

[pbowyer]

I think I've asked this before on HN but is there a language-independent test format? There are multiple libraries (think date/time manipulation for a good example) where the tests should be the same across all languages, but every library has developed its own test suite.

Having a standard test input/output format would let test definitions be shared between libraries.

[sfjailbird]

Like Cucumber?

https://www.google.com/search?q=cucumber+testing+framework

[sciurus]

https://testanything.org/ ?

[k__]

Maybe tape?

[cr125rider]

I’ve got to imagine a suite of end to end tests (probably most common is fixture file in, assert against output fixture file) would be very hard to nail all of the possible branches and paths. Like the example here, thousands of well made tests are required.