Testing & CI: current setup is non-functional — proposal to restore automated checks

[Martin-1997]

Summary

The repository contains the scaffolding for automated tests, but in practice there are no working tests and no running CI. As the app takes on dependency and Nextcloud-version updates, this makes every change hard to verify and risky to merge. This issue documents the current state and proposes an incremental path to a working, low-maintenance safety net.

Current state

• PHPUnit scaffolding exists but is empty of real tests. phpunit.xml, phpunit.integration.xml, and tests/bootstrap.php are present.
• The only test is default template boilerplate. tests/Unit/Controller/PageControllerTest.php only asserts that the index page returns a TemplateResponse named index — it was generated by the Nextcloud app skeleton and tests none of the app's actual behaviour.
• That single test can no longer run. It uses PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase and an untyped setUp(), which is PHPUnit 5-era syntax. It is incompatible with modern PHPUnit (class renamed in 6+, void return type required in 8+), so make test does not produce a passing baseline.
• No coverage of the logic-heavy code. There are no tests for controllers, services, or the Db mappers — including the report query building, which is the most complex and most bug-prone part of the app (see the recent grouped-report / GROUP BY compatibility problem raised in fixes mtierltd/timetracker#234 #245).
• CI is defunct. .travis.yml is pinned to PHP 5.6–7.1, Nextcloud stable14, and MariaDB 10.1. Travis CI's free open-source service has been shut down for years, so CI has not run in a very long time.
• No GitHub Actions. There is no .github/workflows/ directory.
• No JS test tooling. There is no package.json; the gulp/karma references in the Makefile are leftover template comments.

Why this matters

Incoming dependency bumps and Nextcloud max-version updates are, by nature, "does everything still work?" changes — exactly the kind of change automated checks verify cheaply and repeatedly. Without them, each such PR has to be validated by hand.

A concrete recent example: the change proposed in #245 would break grouped reports on PostgreSQL and on MySQL with ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY (the modern default), because it selects a non-aggregated column under a GROUP BY. Nothing in the current repo would have caught that.

Proposed solutions (incremental, ordered by leverage)

• 1. Restore CI with GitHub Actions (replace Travis). Start with the cheap, high-value checks that require almost no test-writing: php -l linting, composer validate/install, and static analysis (Psalm or PHPStan). Nextcloud publishes reusable workflow templates (in nextcloud/.github) that can largely be dropped in.
• 2. Establish a green baseline. Modernise the existing test (PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase, setUp(): void) or replace it, so make test passes again and CI has something to run.
• 3. Add targeted unit tests for the highest-risk logic first. Prioritise the Db mappers and report query building — the multi-database SQL where bugs are silent and engine-specific.
• 4. Add integration tests against multiple databases (later). Spin up Nextcloud against SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL to catch cross-database SQL issues like the GROUP BY case above. Higher setup cost, but the strongest guarantee for this app's SQL.
• 5. (Optional, lower priority) Frontend JS tests, if/when a JS build and package.json are reintroduced. -> this will not be done because of Migrate the frontend to the Nextcloud UI framework (@nextcloud/vue) — staged epic #259

Suggested first step

Land a minimal green CI (lint + static analysis + PHPUnit) before merging the pending dependency-update PRs, so that every subsequent PR is checked automatically instead of by hand.