[self-interest] UnitTesting

[Russell Allen]

There are a small number of unit tests spread around the standard image, but no framework.

I have looked at porting over sUnit or equivalent but haven't yet.  If anyone creates a decent unit testing framework I'd be happy to include it!  

One issue is Self's preference for passing error handling blocks down the stack rather than having a error handling mechanism passing error objects up the call stack.

Another issue is where the tests go. In most Smalltalks they seem to sit in a parallel class structure, semantically linked by the class name ie "OrderedCollectionTest" etc.  Is this the best way?  What is the equivalent in Self?  I must admit to not wanting to tie our objects to the formal lobby naming hierarchy more than necessary.  

Russell

On 22/10/2010, at 5:54 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann <janpaulbultmann at me.com> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 21, 2010, at 5:35 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
> 
>>  
>> Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
>> 
>> > Hey,
>> > I noticed that Self does not have a unit-testing Framework.
>> 
>> True.
>> 
>> > In Smalltalk test driven development is a fundamental part of the 
>> > system, at least as far as I know.
>> 
>> It is now a major part of Smalltalk and other language frameworks. The
>> rise of agile programming methods is one factor that has made unit
>> testing more popular.
>> 
>> > So were there just more important things to do or is this a design 
>> > choice?
>> > Are unit-tests useless in the self world or is there a better thing 
>> > I'm just missing :)?
>> 
>> It is important to remember that the Self project was killed way back in
>> 1995. David Ungar continued to improve things on his own and was finally
>> able to release his changes in 2000. More improvements were done by
>> Dave's team as part of the Kline project until that was killed in 2006.
>> As far as I know, Russell Allen is behind most of the changes since
>> then.
>> 
>> A result of this history is that many things in Self are frozen as they
>> were back in 1995. If you look at the built in web browser, for example,
>> it doesn't even understand tables. I would say that the lack of a unit
>> test framework is due to the same thing.
>> 
>> In Self, a unit testing framework would probably be more elegant than in
>> Smalltalk since it is so much easier to create unique objects.
>> 
> 
> Yeah, I thought of that too.
> I'd be pretty easy to use mock objects simply by exchanging some slots.
> 
> Greets Jan
> 
> 
>> 
>> -- Jecel
>> 
> 
> 
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