2006/7/5, George Harley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Hi,
Just seen Tim's note on test support classes and it really caught my
attention as I have been mulling over this issue for a little while now.
I think that it is a good time for us to return to the topic of class
library test layouts.
The current proposal [1] sets out to segment our different types of test
by placing them in different file locations. After looking at the recent
changes to the LUNI module tests (where the layout guidelines were
applied) I have a real concern that there are serious problems with this
approach. We have started down a track of just continually growing the
number of test source folders as new categories of test are identified
and IMHO that is going to bring complexity and maintenance issues with
these tests.
Consider the dimensions of tests that we have ...
API
Harmony-specific
Platform-specific
Run on classpath
Run on bootclasspath
Behaves different between Harmony and RI
BTW, these are Harmony-specific...
I see your point. And I think we need this directory-level split to
make it possible
to run variuous kinds of tests with different frameworks. We were already
discussing that JUnit extensions are not very good for performance testing.
In the future we might find out that some new test contribution is
inconsistent with the framework we have chosen.
So I'm for directory-level separation of the tests. (Probably some categories
should have their own build)
Thanks
Mikhail
Stress
...and so on...
If you weigh up all of the different possible permutations and then
consider that the above list is highly likely to be extended as things
progress it is obvious that we are eventually heading for large amounts
of related test code scattered or possibly duplicated across numerous
"hard wired" source directories. How maintainable is that going to be ?
If we want to run different tests in different configurations then IMHO
we need to be thinking a whole lot smarter. We need to be thinking about
keeping tests for specific areas of functionality together (thus easing
maintenance); we need something quick and simple to re-configure if
necessary (pushing whole directories of files around the place does not
seem a particularly lightweight approach); and something that is not
going to potentially mess up contributed patches when the file they
patch is found to have been recently pushed from source folder A to B.
To connect into another recent thread, there have been some posts lately
about handling some test methods that fail on Harmony and have meant
that entire test case classes have been excluded from our test runs. I
have also been noticing some API test methods that pass fine on Harmony
but fail when run against the RI. Are the different behaviours down to
errors in the Harmony implementation ? An error in the RI implementation
? A bug in the RI Javadoc ? Only after some investigation has been
carried out do we know for sure. That takes time. What do we do with the
test methods in the meantime ? Do we push them round the file system
into yet another new source folder ? IMHO we need a testing strategy
that enables such "problem" methods to be tracked easily without
disruption to the rest of the other tests.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the TestNG framework [2] seemed
like a reasonably good way of allowing us to both group together
different kinds of tests and permit the exclusion of individual
tests/groups of tests [3]. I would like to strongly propose that we
consider using TestNG as a means of providing the different test
configurations required by Harmony. Using a combination of annotations
and XML to capture the kinds of sophisticated test configurations that
people need, and that allows us to specify down to the individual
method, has got to be more scalable and flexible than where we are
headed now.
Thanks for reading this far.
Best regards,
George
[1]
http://incubator.apache.org/harmony/subcomponents/classlibrary/testing.html
[2] http://testng.org
[3]
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200606.mbox/[EMAIL
PROTECTED]
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