Apache Directory Project - [Studio] [Help wanted] Eclipse RCP testing framework

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[Studio] [Help wanted] Eclipse RCP testing framework

Stefan Seelmann

2007-10-22, 7:11 pm

Hello everybody,

as Studio is downloaded and used more and more, we get more an more bug
reports and feature requests. We have to refactory some code in order to
add new features, currently I am refactoring the browser core. Such
refactorings are dangerous without good test and without a good test
coverage. But the fact is that we only have very few tests in Studio and
they aren't integrated into the build system.

One reason is that (at least) I am a bit lazy in writing tests ;-).
However testing an Eclipse RCP application is not really easy. It is
necessary to startup eclipse because even some non-UI code depends on
the eclipse framework. And for UI-code I only found commercial test tools.

I think testing the core classes is a must. One thing I found is that
Eclipse/RCP could be started in headless mode, I think that could be
used to integrate tests into the build system. Another idea is to learn
how Eclipse itself is tested, I guess they have a lot of unit tests.

So if somebody has some expierence with testing RCP applications or is
just interested in figuring out how to test them, we would be really
pleased if somebody would like to contribute to Studio.

Best Regards,
Stefan Seelmann

Emmanuel Lecharny

2007-10-22, 7:11 pm

Hi Stefan,

yes, testing a GUI is painful... And no, I don't know about the silver
bullet tool to test a GUI.

The only way to lower the number of remaining bugs is to decouple the
presentation from the logic. MVC is the way to go. If you can reach a
point where you can define Mock objects to mimic user interactions,
then you have done more than half the way !

At some point, for the browser, the solution will also imply that you
embed ADS into your tests to be able to guarantee that you don't have
regression.

At the end of the day, doing that will lower the number of bugs in the GUI.

I saw that you filled a JIRA where you expressed the need to use an
existing library (LdapDNParser or NameParser) instead of your own
brewed library. Doing that will be a benefit because existing
libraries are already coming with their own tests, so you will avoid
to define some new ones, saving a lot of your time.

You have raised a very good concern with those tests. We can discuss
about how to create some tests on some pieces of the browser code, I'm
sure that many other committers have good idea about how to improve
the client robustness.

E.

On 10/22/07, Stefan Seelmann <seelmann-1oDqGaOF3Lkdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> as Studio is downloaded and used more and more, we get more an more bug
> reports and feature requests. We have to refactory some code in order to
> add new features, currently I am refactoring the browser core. Such
> refactorings are dangerous without good test and without a good test
> coverage. But the fact is that we only have very few tests in Studio and
> they aren't integrated into the build system.
>
> One reason is that (at least) I am a bit lazy in writing tests ;-).
> However testing an Eclipse RCP application is not really easy. It is
> necessary to startup eclipse because even some non-UI code depends on
> the eclipse framework. And for UI-code I only found commercial test tools=
..
>
> I think testing the core classes is a must. One thing I found is that
> Eclipse/RCP could be started in headless mode, I think that could be
> used to integrate tests into the build system. Another idea is to learn
> how Eclipse itself is tested, I guess they have a lot of unit tests.
>
> So if somebody has some expierence with testing RCP applications or is
> just interested in figuring out how to test them, we would be really
> pleased if somebody would like to contribute to Studio.
>
> Best Regards,
> Stefan Seelmann
>
>
>

--=20
Regards,
Cordialement,
Emmanuel L=E9charny
www.iktek.com