Volkswagen – detects when your tests are being run in CI, and makes them pass | Hacker News Reader

Volkswagen – detects when your tests are being run in CI, and makes them pass

github.com

195 pointsauchenberg20 comments

The joke was done a few days ago (I have no idea if this was the first either but its the first I saw)

(To those that don't get the joke, Volkswagon just got popped for cheating their emissions tests by detecting when they were in a test vs real world environment)

The repository actually links to phpunit-vw at the bottom under the credits section.

> Heavily inspired by https://github.com/hmlb/phpunit-vw

He only changed the title. Same concept, joke and code as the original (js, php, same thing). In my book it's a complete rip-off.

The Node.js addon linked in this story ("volkswagen") credits the PHP addon which you link to ("phpunit-vw") as their inspiration.

It seems somehow very appropriate that the Node.js version is the one that gets to the frontpage of HN even though the original idea was a PHP thing. Edit: and the PHP one was posted to HN yesterday, getting much less attention.

Yes, it's appropriate because the title of one submission sucked, and caused it to not succeed. ;)

> PHPUnit VW extension

> Volkswagen – detects when your tests are being run in CI, and makes them pass

Tellingly, "Node" and "NPM" aren't in the title or URL. So much for bias.

Earlier thread for phpunit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341405

I suppose this would be fair use of the Volkswagen trademark for parody, were it not for the fact that the VW brand is so well known that that would outweigh the parody exemption?

(I'm not a lawyer, but I need to protect some IP rights regularly, so trademark law interest me.)

Parody is free speech stuff. Trademark is different. It is mostly about avoiding confusion. No one is gonna confuse that this product is developed by Volkswagen.

IANAL. someone correct me if I am wrong.

Hi, I'm the dev. I've been thinking about it. I would consider it a success if we got a call from Volkswagen, so I'm willing to take that risk. That being said, I think they are way to busy at the moment ;)

For those that don't get the joke: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772

When would this be useful? Isn't the point of CI to ensure bugs don't make it to production?

EDIT: I get the joke now. Thanks to everyone who replied.

it's meant to be funny, not useful :-)

I'm pretty sure this is just a joke in response to this: http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/21/investing/vw-emissions-cheat...

Brilliantly executed pun, or clueless poster? Not sure which.

Works on Codeship as well. The process.env.CI is set to true there as well.

this would be useful....if i wrote tests, that is.

I got you covered. We've made a badge you can add to your README.md that will always show your tests as passing even if you don't have any :)

https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen#why

this is the ultimate HN troll. Luv it.

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