RE: [stellation-res] Work merging Unit tests

["Mark C. Chu-Carroll" <mcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2002-12-30 at 07:09, DeSmet_Ringo@xxxxxxx wrote:
> Mark,
> 
> > What I'd like to do is propose adding a new master test runner, which
> > will run all of the suites in the unittest project. To do this, we
> > would add a method "static void addTests(TestSuite suite)" to each
> > of the unit tests; and the current "suite" method in each of the
> > current test suites would be replaced with boilerplate:
> > 
> > 	public static TestSuite suite() {
> > 	   TestSuite result = new TestSuite();
> > 	   addTests(result);
> > 	   return result;
> >         }
> > 
> > Then, in the master unit test class, when you add a suite, 
> > you just add
> > one line to its "suite" method, to call the "addTests" method of
> > your new test suite class.
> 
> So in the end, you have two methods in each test class, the suite method and
> the addTests method, right?
> 
> For quite some time now, I have the habit of only writing a suite method and
> adding sub-suites to it in there:
> 
> public static Test suite() {
> 	TestSuite suite = new TestSuite(ThisClass.class);
> 	suite.setName("A descriptive name, something better than the
> classname");
> 
> 	suite.addTest(SubSuiteClass.suite());
> 	// Add other subsuites here.
> }
> 
> You only have one method per class where to look. Giving a Class object to
> the TestSuite constructor will let it detect all test methods through
> reflection. Using the suite method in both master and sub suites gives you
> the opportunity to run any suite you like. E.g. if you use the Eclipse JUnit
> test runner on a sub suite, it will build the sub suite using the suite
> method, not through the addTests method.
> 
> Setting a more readable name is always nice in test runners like the Swing
> GUI test runner and the Eclipse JUnit test runner. You will see nice
> categories with a clean name...

OK. I agree that being able to name suites is useful. I do make heavy
use of the individual test names, and there's a lot of value there.

But what I'd really like is an easy-to-use way to run multiple suites
together, as a comprehensive test. And there's a compromise there: you
do lose the ability to name suites; you do lose the ability to
automatically generate the suite using introspection; you have to write
your own suite methods that work by manually adding tests. 

I'm far from an expert on JUnit, so there's a fairly good chance that
there's a better way of doing what I want without making these
compromises. Do you know a better way of using JUnit to merge the suites
together into one comprehensive suite, while still retaining the ability
to run them individuality?

	-Mark

-- 
Mark Craig Chu-Carroll,  IBM T.J. Watson Research Center  
*** The Stellation project: Advanced SCM for Collaboration
***		http://www.eclipse.org/stellation
*** Work Email: mcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx  ------- Personal Email: markcc@xxxxxxxxxxx