[ODE] tinderbox - another unit testing idea

[Doron Tal]

I looked up this link and I'm not yet sure I'm crazy about it.
The example they show seems like it would take lots of coding
for even a very simple test.

Anyhow, including some built-in tests is definitely desirable,
some general suggestions:

1. it should be an easy to use system

2. the system should not slow down the code, or
    at least, it should be possible to turn testing off

3. the most important suggestion: some basic tests, that
    ensure much of ODE is working as expected, should always
    be there and should be linked with CVS check-ins automatically:
    i.e. whenever you want to check in ODE changes, you'd first have
    to go through the test units and only if every test passes then
    you'll be allowed to check in your code -- this would greatly
    facilitate and speed up cooperation on the code.

Some mozilla projects use "tinderbox" for unit-testing,
combined with "bonzai" (a web-based interface to CVS) to accomplish
most of the above.  We may want to consider this for ODE.
Here's a link:

http://www.mozilla.org/tinderbox.html

It's difficult to set up, requires a web server, but once it's
set up it requires almost nothing from the programmers who
check in new code, except that they don't break the existing
build and/or test scripts.  I believe it's "fully automatic".

-Doron


Rodrigo Hernandez wrote:
> The page is at http://cppunit.sourceforge.net/cppunit-wiki
> the compressed code is ~700k, however like I said, I think it would be a 
> much
> better approach to check for cppunit at conguration time, and allowing 
> the user to
> turn the tests on or off, since if I understand correctly, the tests 
> would be used to
> check that everything is fine after aplying a patch or making changes 
> directly to the ODE code.
> 
> J. Perkins wrote:
> 
>> On 10/26/05, Rodrigo Hernandez <kwizatz at aeongames.com> wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> J. Perkins wrote:
>>>   
>>>
>>>> Does this work on Windows too?
>>>>     
>>>
>>> Yes, using MinGW/MSYS or Cygwin, making custom builds for VStudio
>>> shouln't be a problem either.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> How big is CppUnit? Can we include the sources with ODE? That's the
>> approach I was planning to take to CppUnitLite, but I haven't had a
>> chance to look into it yet. I want to make it as brainlessly easy as
>> possible to build and run the tests, otherwise they won't get used.
>> Ideally, the tests should be built at the same time as the rest of the
>> library, and every time you build the library.
>>
>> Thanks for looking into this, much appreciated. I have access to
>> Visual Studio here, let me know if there is anything I can do to help
>> out.
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>  
>>
> 
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