How not to break existing TAP test plans?

Hi!

Didn't see any discussions about this one.

Currently TAP Plan XML files, which are very important files in TAP break often or rather it's way too easy to break them.

For example, we a large amount of test steps and instruments that need to be constantly updated and it's way too easy to break existing TAP plans that rely on variable and namespace names.

Maintaining all variable/namespace changes as they are in such large codebase is difficult and is very prone to accidents. Additionally, it obviouvsly makes refactoring certain parts of code impossible, which is costly.

So are there solutions that I am not aware of or is this something that should be corrected?

If not, I will start by adding few suggestions:

1. Have automatic unit tests that verify that the tap plans do not break

• Good: No changes to existing code needed
• Bad: Not easy to implement if existing CI pipeline does not exist
• Bad: Can be bothersome to maintain
• Bad: Still quite prone for accdients, although better than nothing
• Bad: Does not make refactoring code much better, although again helps

1. Add "UID ForTapPlan" -property to Display attribute, that can be used as a secondary key tbh not sure if possible

• Good: Minor addition, big improvement
• Bad: Users need to remember to use this when refactoring