Re: A simple unit test framework

From:

James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

5 May 2007 12:41:11 -0700

Message-ID:

<1178394071.262042.231610@e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>

On May 4, 10:51 pm, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:

anon wrote:

Pete Becker wrote:

Ian Collins wrote:

Pete Becker wrote:

nw wrote:

I previously asked for suggestions on teaching testing in C++. Based
on some of the replies I received I decided that best way to proceed
would be to teach the students how they might write their own unit
test framework, and then in a lab session see if I can get them to
write their own. To give them an example I've created the following
UTF class (with a simple test program following). I would welcome a=

suggestions on how anybody here feels this could be improved:

A fool with a tool is still a fool. The challenge in
testing is not test management, but designing test cases
to cover the possible failures in the code under test.
That's something that most developers don't do well,
because their focus is on getting the code to run.

Unless the test are written first!

You can't do coverage analysis or any other form of white-box testing
on code that hasn't been written. There is a big difference between a
tester's minset and a develper's mindset, and it's very hard for one
person to do both.

The latest trends are to write tests first which demonstrates the
requirements, then code (classes+methods). In this case you will not
have to do a coverage, but it is a plus. This way, the code you write
will be minimal and easier to understand and maintain.
I agree this way looks harder (and I am not using it), but I am sure
once you get use to it - your programming skills will improve drastical=

I find it makes the design and code process easier and way more fun. No
more debugging sessions!

Until the code starts actually being used.

I'll admit that it's probably more fun to just write whatever
you want, rather than to have a hard specification which has to
be met, but the companies I work for want something useful.

--
James Kanze (Gabi Software) email: james.kanze@gmail.com
Conseils en informatique orient=E9e objet/
Beratung in objektorientierter Datenverarbeitung
9 place S=E9mard, 78210 St.-Cyr-l'=C9cole, France, +33 (0)1 30 23 00 34