Re: [Xotcl] test driven development

From: Victor Mayevski <vitick_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 11:00:49 -0700

Thanks to everyone for your replies. They were very helpful.

Victor

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 6:09 AM, Mark Strembeck <strembeck_at_acm.org> wrote:
> Hi Victor,
>
> in case you like to give it a try: version 0.5 of the basic STORM test
> environment (including a small example written by Stefan) can be
> downloaded from the following URL:
> http://wi.wu.ac.at/home/mark/STORM/storm-v.0.5.tar.gz
> or
> http://wi.wu.ac.at/home/mark/STORM/storm%2dv%2e0%2e5%2etar%2egz
>
> best regards,
>
> Mark
>
>
> On Tuesday 26 April 2011 12:40:14 Stefan Sobernig wrote:
>> Victor,
>>
>> > I am beginning to learn and use test driven development in my
>> > projects. I've noticed that NX does not use the standard "tcltest"
>> > package in Tcl but instead provides it's own "nx::test". Is there a
>> > specific reason for that?
>>
>> I can't give you the full story, only some observations of mine. To some
>> extent, nx::test and especially its predecessors (xotcl::test) are a legacy:
>>
>> OTcl had its own testing environment, not using or not building upon
>> tcltest, and so had XOTcl; see e.g.
>> http://otcl-tclcl.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/otcl-tclcl/otcl/lib/test.tcl?view=markup
>>
>> test migration vs. test continuity so is the issue here. also: nx::test
>> & friends have always been used to test core functionality of the
>> language system, rather than application testing. for your XOTcl/nx
>> application, tcltest is certainly a viable option (coming with nice
>> helpers actually missing in nx::test). another answer along these lines
>> is probably that a home-brewed testing evironment is usually one of the
>> first prototype applications written by the language authors in their
>> language.
>>
>> as for application testing, however, an object-aware testing environment
>> comes handy; you can refine your test suites occasionally through
>> mixins; or nx::test traces object lifecycles during test execution to
>> maintain a prestine testing sandbox to avoid unwanted test interactions.
>> however, that does not mean that you could not realise all of this using
>> tcltest.
>>
>> some further pointers, especially when it comes to TDD (which is, by the
>> way, something different than merely writing and executing tests in the
>> sense of tcltest or nx::test):
>>
>> Two or three years ago, I had a look at a xUnit framework for XOTcl:
>> http://xotcllib.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xotcllib/xounit/
>>
>> While it gave me a xUnit environment, it found it incomplete and its
>> implementation rather clumsy (including its usage of Exception objects
>> ontop of Tcl's error control flow mechanism).
>>
>> More recently, Mark published on a scenario-driven approach and
>> prototype framework (STORM) which I successfully used in one or two dev
>> projects of mine. It comes with essentials concepts for applying a
>> test-first development approach:
>>
>> http://wi.wu-wien.ac.at/home/mark/publications/se2011-extended.pdf
>>
>> I don't know whether the prototype implementation (the XOTcl script) is
>> publicly available, but you could most certainly talk Mark into
>> providing it to you :)
>>
>> //stefan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> >
>> > Victor
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > Xotcl_at_alice.wu-wien.ac.at
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>> >
>>
>>
>>
>