[Xotcl] test driven development

[Mark Strembeck]

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
> 
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> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Victor
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> >
> 
> 
>