What to do with non-regressive tests?

Question

Not really a Ruby on Rails question, but that is the framework which we are working in.

We are migrating data from a legacy system into our own system, and have been testing the code that will do the data migrations. These tests live alongside the rest of the applications tests, and so ran against our build server on commits, etc.

Once we've migrated this data, these tests will seemingly be useless to us, since the code they are testing will never be run again. What's more, is the tests will most likely get stale, and might require maintenance, lest they break our build.

Should we just be throwing these tests out afterward? Tagging them in some way so that they don't get ran after we do things for real? Something else?

Answer 1

If it were me, I would separate out the project that does the data migration along with its tests. That way the tests don't generate noise in your current build process, and you only have to modify them if you (for some reason) touch the migration project again.

If this isn't possible, then just rip all of it out once you are done. If you ever need to get it back it should be in source control... right!?!

Answer 2

Get rid of them.*

*Which is to say, let them sit in source control if you ever need to refer to them.