RHS Tcltest is an amazing little package for writing simple unit-type tests. However, there are a lot of things that tcltest makes it very hard to do. There are other things that aren't hard to do, but make the tests that do them hard to read. I'd like to put together a list of desired functions for a new test package, in hopes of eventually writing such a beast (or, someone else coming along and writing it). The things I'm looking for are:
test myComplexTest-1.1 {
A sample of a complex test, with comments
} -setup {
set data {a 1 b 2 c 3}
set filename [extrapackage::makeFile $data myComplexTestFile-1.1]
catch {unset myArray}
catch {unset expectArray} ; array set expectArray $data
} -body {
set code [readFileToArray $filename myArray]
assertEquals -nofail 1 $code "The read failed, don't bother with other assertions"
assertEquals -nofail 1 [info exists myArray] "The array did not get created"
assertArrayEquals expectArray myArray "The array results were incorrect"
}I'm sure I can come up with other requirements. More importantly, though, is... what would other folks want in a testing package?
RHS 2004-08-20:
It occurs to me that it would be useful to have a -description element also. This would be different from the short description that is the 2nd argument to the test, in that it would be a clear explanation of what function/requirement is being proven by this test. The idea is that one could ask the test suite for a summary of all the tests, and it would print out the test names along with their longer description, which could be used as a way to document what the current requirements for the project are.
On the other hand, perhaps I should just be using the provided description argument to better use. I tend to keep that argument as short and direct as possible. Perhaps I should be adding more detail there. I do, however, like the idea of being able to do something like:
test myproc-2.1 {
Throw an typed error if class is out of range
} -description {
The 'class' parameter can have a value from 0 to 6. If
the provided value is outside that range, throw a typed
error.
} -body {
foreach class {-1 7} {
set code [catch {myproc $class} result]
assertEquals -nofail 1 $code "Proc call did not throw an error"
assertEquals {CALLER {INVALID PARAMETER VALUE}} $::errorCode
assertEquals \
"Invalid value '$class' for input class. Must be between 0 and 6, inclusive" \
$result "Error message was incorrect"
}
}And then be able to automatically get a summary like
When one gets the summary for the entire test suite(s) for a project, it should be a complete summary of all the requirements for the project.
RHS 2004-08-24:
Having had time to put some thought into the mechanism I'd like to use to define tests and test suites, I've run into some "issues". I'd very much like to be able to define a Test Suite, and specify what tests go into that Suite, much like one does when running tcltest now. In addition, I'd like to be able to build Suites containing other Suites, and so on.
Let's say we have a directory structure of:
test test/module1 test/module2 test/module3
I'd like to be able to have the following files:
# File: test/suite.test
set suite [testsuite::suite]
# Add each of the module directories
# This adds the suites defined in those directories, if there is one
$suite add directory ./module1
$suite add directory ./module2
$suite add directory ./module3
# File: test/moduleX/suite.test
# Add all the .test files in the directory
# suite.test is automatically excluded unless otherwise stated
set suite [testsuite::suite]
$suite add files ./*.test
# File: test/module1/myprocs.test
testsuite::test aproc-1.1 {
A test for aproc
} -body { ... } -result { ... }Anyways, that's the basic layout I'd like to have.
I'd very much like suites and tests to act like object commands and return a command name that can be used to access the information about it. It would then be possible to load a test suite, get a list of its tests, and then iterate over the tests to get information about them.
My problem is that I'm not sure how to have tests that are defined be automatically added to the test suite that is loading the test file. My thought is to have a test suite register itself as the current suite before it loads any files (or runs any tests, or does anything interesting, etc.). Then, the test proc will add its command name to the currently defined suite when it's defined. However, this seems like a bit of a hack. I was hoping someone else might have run into a similar sitauation and be able to comment on what they did, if they think it's better. Any helpful thoughts would be much appreciated.
I'm also considering having a suite load all its tests before it actually runs any of them. However, this means that the commonly used pattern of running general setup code at the beginning of a test file (i.e., setting up data structures that are used in the tests, etc.) no longer works. The solution to this is to have a way for a test file to register setup code and cleanup code that are run before/after the tests that are defined in that file are run. I'm not sure on this particular aspect yet, though.
RHS 2004-08-29:
I'm trying to figure out what the options to the suite object should be for handling of loading various files. I'd like to be able to express the following with more ease:
foreach directory [getDirectoriesMatching $someDirPattern] {
if { [matchesPattern $directory $someExcludeDirPattern] } {
continue
}
if { [file exists [file join $directory suite.test]] } {
loadFile [file join $directory suite.test]
} else {
foreach file [getFilesMatching $directory $someFilePattern] {
if { [matchesPattern $file $someExcludeFilePattern] } {
continue
}
loadFile [file join $directory $file]
}
}
}I'd like to be able to express the above in -options for the suite, possibly. And/or, I'd like to be able do it with something like:
testsuite::suite mysuite {
a description
} -eval {
loadFiles ... some ... info ... that ... expresses ... what ... is ... above ...
}I'm just not sure how to do that without making the options (to the suite or to loadFiles), particularly scary. Perhaps:
loadFiles -includeDirs $someDirPattern \
-excludeDirs $someExcludeDirPattern \
-includeFiles $someFilePattern \
-excludeFiles $someExcludeFilePatternWith the same options being allowed to the suite constructor.
Of course, I'd also like to be able to say "do that, recursively", perhaps via a -depth option that represents how many directories deep to go, with -1 being as deep as possible. My current thought for the default configuration is to be something like:
loadFiles -includeDirs * \
-excludeDirs . .. \
-includeFiles *.test \
-excludeFiles suite.test \
-depth -1
loadFiles -includeDirs . \
-includeFiles *.test \
-excludeFiles suite.test
-depth 0Only, I'm still not sure how to say "if there's a suite.test file, load that instead of the other files, and don't recurse into that directory structure any deeper." /sigh It's getting ugly.
So, to relate this info to what tcltest does:
What I want is very much like what tcltest does, except for the following:
RHS 2004-09-02:
Having spent a lot of time working on the package, I'm considering changing one of the aspects of defining suites and tests.
My design, previously, had been to do things the way tcltest does them. You define tests, and they get added automatically to the "suite" of tests that are run. Technically, there's only one suite with tcltest, and the tests are run as they are defined. I want to allow for multiple suites to be defined, as well as allowing one to specify that tests should be run right after they are defined, or once all the tests have been loaded.
My problem is that it's not easy to set up something so that tests are automatically loaded into the correct suite. It is possible, but it's not easy, and it requires a bit of magic, and I'm not a big fan of magic, since it means there may be weird instances where it's very hard to make things work or to figure out what's wrong. I'd like things to be simple and easy to understand. It also makes it very difficult in cases where one wants to define a Suite or Test inside a Test (i.e., to test the testsuite package).
My thought is to define tests/suites like:
## file 1:
set suite1 [suite package1 "description" ... other options]
$suite1 add [test procone-1.1 {description} ... other options]
set suite11 [suite package1.1 "description" ... other options]
$suite11 add [test $proctwo-1.1 {description} ... other options]
$suite1 add $suite11
# would be the same as '$suite1 add [source $someFile]'
$suite addFile $someFile
# loads files in a directory based on -includeFiles and -excludeFiles
$suite addDirectory $someDirname
# loads directories based on -includeDirs -excludeDirs
$suite addChildren
return $suite1The main things to note here are:
Problems with this approach:
## File 1.test: set suite [suite file1 ...] $suite addFile "File 2.test" $suite add [test ...] return $suite ## File 2.test set suite [suite file2 ...] $suite add [test ...] return $suite
As can be seen in the above code, the variable name $suite is used in both files. By the time the first suite goes to define the test, the variable $suite contains the second suite, not the first.
The obvious solution to this is to give every suite variable a unique name. However, that can get a bit annoying after the depth of the file structure gets complex. It would be possible to add a command to generate a unique name based on the filename, but do we really want to have to do:
## File 1.test: set [::testsuite::getVarName]1 [suite file1 ...] [::testsuite::getVarName]1 add [test ...] ...
That just seems ugly to me. Other possibilities are:
Both separate interps and separate processes have their own issues with not being able to share data well. I'm still putting thought into how to best handle this whole situation.
Lars H: A fourth possibility is to source the file doing the above suite definitions locally inside a procedure. This separates variables of one definition from variables of another, although it of course also means that any auxilliary variables like $suite will cease to exist once the file has been sourced. It could look something like this
proc source_suitedef {fname args} {
set default_options $args
register_suite [source $fname]
}where the $default_options are meant to be a mechanism for passing some extra options to all tests in a suite (I'd expect that kind of thing to be useful, but perhaps you already have some mechanism for that). Another perk of sourcing in a procedure is that the default namespace is the one of that proc, so if it is in the testsuite namespace then all ::testsuite::* commands are available without namespace qualification.
MAKR: I like the current tcltest package and the proposed additions are more like the notorious bells and whistles making it far too complex. Nevertheless if the current functionality is retained, then I have nothing to complain about.
What's really missing, however, is statistics and reports when used with large applications. E.g. when testing the whole application I currently overload the proc command to be able to get some numbers which procs and commands got added through package require statements and directly or indirectly tested. So in the end I have a report which procs are still untested and an estimate about the overall testing coverage....
To my mind things along this way need more attention.
PJM: The points raised by MAKR seem pretty solid, some of the things I need to do are:
For what its worth a summary/implementation of the ideas above can be found in PTL - a pretty test language