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Re: Unit testing, what is it?

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On 08/26/11 04:15 AM, nroberts wrote:
> I've recently started at a new job after 5 years working somewhere
> else, which wasn't able to teach me much so I taught myself.  I
> implemented what I read about unit testing using the Boost.Test
> framework (was working in C++).
>
> My idea of a unit test is to take some chunk of a program, often a
> single class or small set of classes meant to work as a cohesive
> entity, and link that part and only that part of the program to a
> driver that asserts the behavior I expect from the unit and outputs a
> report for me.  Generally I make sure there's a way to turn off
> verbosity so the build system can use the return code to tell me
> simply whether the test passes or fails.  Then I have a growing set of
> these programs that are compiled and run as part of my build process.
>
> I was rather surprised to find that something quite different goes by
> the name "unit test" at the new employer, but maybe I'm the one that's
> wrong.  Here they compile the program, which is a small part of a
> large, multitiered framework, and run another program that requests
> data from it; this client is somewhat configurable in what data it
> requests.  Then they manually check things like the log and database
> to see what's there and make sure it's correct.

You are much closer to the mark.  A good definition and description of 
unit tests can be found here:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UnitTest

> At some level I suppose this way does test certain aspects of the
> code, and probably stresses particular "units" within it, but are
> these actually "unit tests"?  Does it matter?

That depends on their definition of "unit".  These look more like system 
tests to me.  The real teat is does a failure identify the function that 
cased the tests to fail, or do they have to do more work to track it down?

-- 
Ian Collins

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Unit testing, what is it? nroberts <roberts.noah@gmail.com> - 2011-08-25 09:15 -0700
  Re : Unit testing, what is it? vincent_belliard <vincent@famillebelliard.fr> - 2011-08-25 12:57 -0700
  Re: Unit testing, what is it? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2011-08-26 08:07 +1200

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