Re: JUnit

[Dalibor Topic]

Raif S. Naffah wrote:
> hello all,
>
> soon the GNU Crypto classes will be moving to Classpath.  i thought now 
> is the right time to bring this subject since it makes it easier for 
> those involved in this work.
>
> the proposal is to port the GNU Crypto Mauve tests to use JUnit instead.  
> this would make it easier to test using an IDE such as the Native 
> Eclipse.
>
> is this idea worth discussing or should we consider that for the 
> forseeable future Mauve only is the test framework for GNU Classpath?

Hi Raif,

Given that the majority (all?) of current tests in Mauve is under the 
GPL, without a single copyright holder, I assume, and the license of 
JUnit is incompatible with the GPL ... I doubt that a  wholesale rewrite 
of Mauve to JUnit would be easy for the moment. GPL3 may fix the prime 
reason for the incompatiblity, though.

It could make sense to use JUnit for new tests, afaict, and it may be a 
nice option for IDE users. There are also other potentially interesting, 
also GPL-incompatible test frameworks, like Test NG, JTiger, or the GPLd 
Jetif etc. with IDE support. Since I don't really use IDEs [1], I can't 
say which one is better supported, though. JUnit has a lot of 
interesting extensions, though.

On the other hand, it may also be interesting to investigate tools like 
JML which would allow us to annotate classes with pre and post 
conditions, and allow us to generate some JUnit test cases from that ... 
See 
http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~leavens/JML/prelimdesign/prelimdesign_6.html#BIB9 
 for a paper desribing JML and its test generation/assertion checking 
tools.

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1] As soon as eclipse runs within a screen session, I will, though ;)