[jwt-dev] Tests and unit testing in JWT ?

[Marc Dutoo <marc.dutoo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all

The issue of tests and how to do unit testing in JWT is of interest for 
the core development team as well as anybody wishing to use JWT for his 
own purpose.

So what do you think about tests and unit testing in JWT ?

As a starter, I've tried to compile a few answers here - feedback welcome !

JWT tests status :
  * none in WE, many but not yet automated in Transformations, junit 
tests in runtime parts (but their impl is generally not jwt per se since 
not available on eclipse because of license issues)

Unit testing
  * for unit tests of eclipse plugins, use pde.junit plugin (from jdt 
ui page). In addition to executing junit tests, it takes care of 
initializing an eclipse workspace, as required by eclipse plugins.
  * "httpunit-like" tools are scarce and far from useful in the field 
of heavy client UIs. Some of my colleagues had a little bit of 
experience with such IBM tools targeting Swing UIs back then, and say 
that writing tests was far more cumbersome and long than writing the UI 
itself -_-
  * hence nothing car replace functional testing (test plans etc.) to 
know a UI is not broken in use or impl - though a good architecture 
(like emf - gmf - extension points - common patterns etc.), development 
and integration methodology, limits risks.
  * more about testing eclipse plugins : see the excellent gamma & beck 
book, and especially its chap12 that is freely available here 
http://today.java.net/today/2004/02/02/ch12Eclipse.pdf

So what if you want to make your own tooling by extending JWT, and you'd 
like to have some level of trust in the fact that a given release of JWT 
is not broken, or that your extensions are not breaking it ? According 
to Alexandre Boutin (main french advocate of Lean Programming),
  * it would not be business-savvy to spend time writing tests for 
existing code. If code exists without tests and you trust it, use it so.
  * But if it breaks at some point, then add tests ensuring it won't 
break the same way anymore.

Regards,
Marc