Unit Testing World Wind

From World Wind Wiki

Unit Testing World Wind

I would like to float a proposal to start adding Unit Testing for any new features we add to World Wind. This isnt user or tester testing, unit tests is code and classes you add to a project to test that the code you write behaves as expected and can be tested and verified by automated tools. So if you check in changes a periodic build can build *and* test the code.

The pedantic form of writing tests is to write it *before* you write the actually code. I know it sounds odd, but think about it, you *have* thought through your classes and written some stuff down, you *do* know where you are gonna start, you *aren't* making it up as you go along are you? :) Writing tests before coding makes you stay honest with yourself.

• Pros
  • Writing tests makes you think about what your code does and is it as simple as possible
  • Verifiable testing, CruiseControl.Net, Nant and many other tools can build and run the tests and give quick feedback about things that dont pass.
  • Regessions are (hopefully) spotted quickly
  • Produces better code.

• Cons
  • Percieved increase in time it takes to write code. (Time spent answering questions and testing is not visible to developers)
  • Extra dependancy for the build.
  • Testing GUI is hard.
  • Separation of concerns is hard to start doing (Large event methods - see WorldWindow.cs - _OnMouseDown)

• Tools
  • Unit Testing
    • TestDriven.NET
    • MB.Unit
  • Automated Builds
    • Nant
    • Cruise Control.Net