George Harley wrote:
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.
ok - on closer reading of this document, I have a few gripes...
First, what happened to the Maven layout we agreed on a while ago?
It seems that we have lost the java directory from underneath src/test. What
happens if we ever have native tests? Refactor the directory structure
again?
Secondly, using the directory structure under src/test to separate API, impl
and stress tests seems wrong to me. At most I would say separate them
by package name - but really this is something that the test harness should
take care of, not something that we all need to do through laborious manual
transfer of files. Those tests that are marked as API get run on the
classpath,
those that are marked as impl are run on the bootclasspath, and those that
are marked as stress tests dont get run as part of the standard test run -
the test harness should take care of all of this! Forgive me if Im wrong,
Im still a newbie with this harness, but isn't this all well within the
capabilities
of TestNG? If I want a test to be a stress test, do I need to bury it down
in some directory called
/src/test/stress/java/common/<package_name>/<class_name>
or do I just add an annotation to the test class marking it as a stress
test that
runs on all platforms?
My final gripe might just be an error on the page - why are the common,
windows and linux directories at the same level as java and java.injected?
(Did I mention that platform specific tests can be handled by TestNG? ;)
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
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 ?
Not very - or was that a rhetorical question? ;)
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.
Yes, this is a major drawback IMHO. Having files moved around from under
the feet of other
patches (I know I am a culprit of this myself with the recent natives
work) is very troublesome
and time consuming to repair. If we enforce the directory structure for
tests that has been
described in previous threads, then I can see it causing us more
problems rather than
simplifying the test process.
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.
Agreed - we should use the capabilities of existing harnesses to give us
what we
need, not invent a complex and unmanageable directory structure that has no
real advantage over the alternatives.
Thanks for reading this far.
My pleasure!
Regards,
Oliver
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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Oliver Deakin
IBM United Kingdom Limited
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