gosentry/docs/TEST_REVIEW_PLAN.md

Test-suite review — action plan

Working document for the findings of the 2026-08-04 review of the test suite. It is not part of the permanent doc set: delete it once every item below is either done or moved to ROADMAP.md.

The rules the findings were judged against live in STANDARDS.md; the suite itself is described in TESTS.md.

Baseline the review started from

• 172 tests, 4693 lines of test code.
• 84.4% statement coverage across domain, storage, runner, scheduler, and app measured together with -coverpkg (per-package figures understate it, because e.g. domain.NewRuntime is exercised from the app tests).
• TESTS.md documents 171 of the 172 tests.

Overall finding: the suite is not padded. Every test but one carries a real assertion, and most record the property they pin. The items below are the exceptions.

Method note: redundancy was not judged by reading. Each suspected pair was run in isolation with -coverprofile and the profiles compared. "Identical coverage" below means the two profiles were byte-identical after sorting. Identical coverage alone is not grounds for deletion — several kept tests hit the same statements while asserting genuinely different properties. Deletion requires identical coverage and assertions that are a subset.

1. Delete the measured duplicates

Each of these has a byte-identical coverage profile with an existing test whose assertions are a superset. Roughly 30 lines total.

• TestCleanupLogsKeepsFilesWithinAgeLimit (cleanup_test.go:53) — delete. TestCleanupLogsRemovesFilesPastMaxAge already asserts that the file inside the age limit survives.
• TestRunDueEmptyOverlapInheritsGlobal (run_test.go:457) — delete. It builds the same service as TestRunDueQueueRerunsAfterFinish (parallel mode, global queue, a job with an empty OverlapPolicy) and asserts strictly less. Before deleting, move its one unique line — the setup guard svc.jobs[0].OverlapPolicy != "" — into TestRunDueQueueRerunsAfterFinish, so that test still states out loud that it is exercising the inherited policy rather than an explicit one.
• TestSameWindowsPathHandlesSpaces (autostart_windows_test.go:20) — delete. It is the same case as TestSameWindowsPathIgnoresCaseAndQuotes (quoted path, mixed case); sameWindowsPath does not split on spaces, so the space in the fixture reaches no new code. If the spaces case is worth naming, fold the path into the surviving test's fixture instead.

After the deletions, re-run the affected packages and confirm coverage is unchanged:

go test -coverpkg=./src/domain,./src/storage,./src/runner,./src/scheduler,./src/app ./src/domain ./src/storage ./src/runner ./src/scheduler ./src/app

2. Fix the documentation drift

• TESTS.md claims TestLoadOrCreateConfigCreatesDefaultsOnFirstRun verifies that a missing config file is created "with sane defaults and a sample job". The test never touches jobs, and storage.defaultJobs sits at 0% coverage. Decide which half is wrong: either drop the claim from the table, or add the assertion that the seeded jobs.json contains the sample jobs. Adding the assertion is the better outcome — defaultJobs is the only accidental coverage gap the review found.
• TESTS.md does not list TestCancelRowOverlapAddsBackOneInnerPadding (layout_test.go:35). Add it to the src/ui/layout_test.go table.

3. Replace the hand-rolled helper in test code

• seed_test.go:34 defines itoa: 18 lines of digit-by-digit conversion with a fresh allocation per digit, in a file that already imports strconv. Replace the calls with strconv.FormatInt and delete the helper. Untested logic inside a test file is exactly what produces a test result nobody can trust.

4. Thin tests — decide, then act

None of these is wrong; each is close enough to worthless that it should be either justified or removed. Grouped because they want one decision, not four.

• TestEmitWithNoObserversIsNoop (events_test.go:36) — the only test in the suite with no assertion at all. Ranging over a nil slice cannot panic in Go, so it pins nothing. Delete.
• TestStoreReturnsWiredStore (service_test.go:51) — asserts that a one-line getter returns its own field. Delete.
• TestMainViewBuilds (mainwindow_test.go:72) — a smoke test; TestMainViewFitsTheDefaultWindowSize builds the same view. Its only unique coverage is w.SetContent(content) and recordStartup(0, true). Either fold those two calls into the sizing test and delete this one, or keep it and say in its comment that recordStartup is what it is for.
• TestFilteredJobIndexesAll / ByNamedFolder / NoFolder / EmptySlice (jobs_view_test.go:59-101) — four tests over one small pure function. Collapse into one table-driven test in the style of TestFilterValue directly above them; the EmptySlice case becomes one row rather than a function.

5. Runtime cost of the runner tests (optional)

TestRunJobLogFileAllHeaders, TestRunJobRecordFields, and TestRunJobWritesLogFile (runner_test.go) have identical coverage profiles but assert three genuinely different things — log headers, RunRecord field values, and the log file's name and directory. They are not duplicates and should not be deleted on that basis.

The cost is that each spawns a real subprocess; the runner package takes 5.3 s. If suite wall time becomes a concern, merge them into one RunJob call with three assertion blocks. Until then, leave them alone.

Explicitly not changing

Recorded here so a later pass does not re-report them:

• TestSetGlobalPausePersistsToConfigFile has the same coverage as TestSetGlobalPauseUpdatesRuntimesAndEmits but asserts a different property — that the flag reaches gosentry.json, which is what makes the pause survive a restart.
• TestRunDueQueueDrainsMultipleOverlaps has the same coverage as TestRunDueQueueRerunsAfterFinish, but drains three queued occurrences rather than one. It is the test that would catch a drain loop that fires once.
• TestCreateStartupShortcutHandlesCyrillicPath and ...HandlesSpaces cover the same statements, but non-ASCII paths and paths with spaces are different real-world failure modes for the WScript.Shell COM call.
• The 0% functions in the non-UI packages are deliberate: the real Clock (a fake is injected everywhere), OpenStore / ResolvePaths / Service.Start / Service.Open and the autostart and desktop-icon wrappers (process entry points and OS integration), and ShouldNotifyOnFailure (a getter under the mutex). storage.defaultJobs is the exception — see item 2.

Suggested order

1. Item 2 (docs) — smallest, and the defaultJobs assertion is the only one that adds coverage.
2. Item 3 (itoa) — independent of everything else.
3. Item 1 (deletions) — one commit, with the coverage re-run as evidence.
4. Item 4 (thin tests) — needs a judgment call per test.
5. Item 5 — only if suite wall time becomes a problem.

Items 1 and 4 change the test inventory, so TESTS.md has to be updated in the same commit. No CHANGELOG.md entry is needed: none of this changes shipped behavior.