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Dspace currently lacks unit testing, which harms the development of the platform and makes easier to reintroduce past bugs while developing. This project is a proposal to add a set of unit test classes to Dspace, based on JUnit, plus some tools that detect issues in the code so we can improve its quality. - Pere Villega |
On Testing
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Existing approaches
So far there's been some approaches to the problem. As far as we know, the following:
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Both would benefit DSpace, as unit testing would ensure code quality while functional testing would ensure the application behaves as expected with standard usage.
Proposals and Scope
The proposals original proposal for the project arewere to:
- Create a framework for Functional Tests, Integration Tests, Unit Tests and Performance Tests that run automatically on build (when possible)
- I will create Create all the background require scaffolding required (mockups, database connections, configs, etc) for the tests to be run
- Integrate with a Continuous Integration server
- (Optional but recommended) Integrate with a code quality management tool
- I will integrate Cobertura to create reports on the testing coverage
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The
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proposed scope of the project
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was to apply the
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tests to the API core. Once done, work would be extended in the remaining time to Manakin and then other subprojects (Sword, LNI, OIA). JSPUI will be left for last, as is an interface that will disappear in the future
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Considerations
DSpace code suffers from testability issues. In the long term it might be advisable to refactor it. Refactoring is dangerous right now as we don't have any test and we risk introducing new bugs to the code base, so it should be avoided until we have enough tests working that makes us confidant we can take that road.
Project Description
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Performance Testing will be achieved through the use of ContiPerf, a tool that reuses JUnit tests as performance tests.
Project Plan
A work plan has been decided in an IRC meeting on May 26th, 2010 (log: [http://duraspace.org/irclogs/index.php?date=2010-05-26|http://duraspace.org/irclogs/index.php?date=2010-05-26]). The work has been divided in 3 parts:
- Single class Unit Tests. Ideal candidates would be classes such a DCDate. These can be easily tested in isolation. This sort of test, along with an appropriate way for maven to execute them will give the project, and DSpace, and early win. Hopefully it will encourage further tests to be created by other developers, and we could move towards an expectation of new code requiring tests like this before they are committed.
- Integration Testing, which requires a database to be present. This would ideally work with an embedded database such as hqsql or derby. We need to think about this a little more to decide how best to do this, and how it would interact with the new services architecture.
- Functional Testing using a tool such as selenium.
It's been decided they will be done in the same order. The aim is not to do tests for all the existing classes, but to create an infrastructure the community can benefit from and can expand with its own tests.
The first two points will be finished before the mid-term evaluation. The third point will be done after that.
Integration with a continuous integration environment will be possible out-of-the-box,a s we will use Maven for points 1 and 2 and Ant for point 3. The capability of running the functional tests in the continuous integration server depends on configuration as it will require running ant tasks created after the generation of code.
Integration with Cobertura and similar is left to the usage of a quality management tool, as the current state of the Maven plugins creates issues when trying to merge reports from different sub-projects.
What has been Implemented
At the end of the project the following components have been implemented:
- Structure to allow the implementation of unit tests
- Structure to allow the implementation of integration tests
- Integration tests allows for performance checks
- Unit tests for package org.dspace.content, usable as example
- Two Integration tests usable as example to create new ones
- Added some static analysis tools (like FindBugs) to the build process
No integration with a Continuous Integration environment or a Quality Management tool has been done. This is left for a later phase after the end of GSoC
The Unit Tests created (due to complications during development) have been restricted to those in package org.dspace.content.
Technical description
A tecnical description of the tools used and steps followed is available at GSOC 2010 Unit Tests - Technical documentation
Considerations
DSpace code suffers from testability issues. In the long term it might be advisable to refactor it. Refactoring is dangerous right now as we don't have any test and we risk introducing new bugs to the code base, so it should be avoided until we have enough tests working that makes us confidant we can take that road.
Source Code
The code is held in an SVN branch: http://scm.dspace.org/svn/repo/sandbox/gsoc/2010/testing/
Relevant Dates
The following list outlines relevant dates for the project:
- 26th May: 1st meeting in IRC, decide the tasks for the following weeks
- 26th May - 9th June: Unit testing for package org.dspace.content.* . Weekly status reports sent to the DSpace GSoC lists, and the dspace-devel list.
- 9th June: 2nd meeting in IRC (21:00 UTC, #duraspace channel) to assert status of unit testing integrations and to discuss where there project should head next
- 12th July (Mid Term Evaluation)
- 9th August (End of Term)
- 9th August - 16th August (Final Evaluation): code fixes and documentation related to the project
Tools
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Wiki Markup SONAR \[[http://www.sonarsource.org/|http://www.sonarsource.org/] \] may be the code quality management tool
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- Embedded database will be H2
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- JMockit will be used as mocking framework
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Thanks
This page has been created with help from Stuart Lewis, Scott Phillips and Gareth Waller. I want to thank them all for their comments. Some information has been taken from Wikipedia to make the text more complete. I'm to blame for errors in the text.
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