Dry-run
A dry run (or a practice run) is a testing process where the effects of a possible failure are intentionally mitigated. For example, an aerospace company may conduct a “dry run” test of a jet’s new pilot ejection seat while the jet is parked on the ground, rather than while it is in flight.
The usage of “dry run” in acceptance procedures (for example in the so-called FAT = factory acceptance testing) is meant as following: the factory — which is a subcontractor — must perform a complete test of the system it has to deliver before the actual acceptance by customer.
Analysis
Seems no any canonical doc says a dry-run must be no side effect.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_run_(testing)
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-meant-by-dry-run-testing-in-software-testing
My assumption of this comes from some Linux commands, e.g., apt install vim --dry-run or rsync -n, basically what they do is like print the things this command gonna do, i.e., won’t do like indeed sync files and delete them.
- https://linux.die.net/man/8/apt-get
- https://linuxhint.com/use-rsync-dry-run/
- https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync
But since we don’t have this kind of no side effect’s assumption, thus whether we wanna indeed do something and rollback is up to u
Reference
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_run_(testing)
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-meant-by-dry-run-testing-in-software-testing