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bgneal@4
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1 I contributed to Fructose
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2 #########################
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3
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4 :date: 2011-05-31 21:40
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5 :tags: Fructose, C++, Python, UnitTesting
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6 :slug: i-contributed-to-fructose
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7 :author: Brian Neal
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8
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9 At work we started using CxxTest_ as our unit testing framework. We like it because
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10 it is very light-weight and easy to use. We've gotten a tremendous amount of benefit
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11 from using a unit testing framework, much more than I had ever imagined. We now have
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12 almost 700 tests, and I cannot imagine going back to the days of no unit tests or ad-hoc
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13 testing. It is incredibly reassuring to see all the tests pass after making a significant
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14 change to the code base. There is no doubt in my mind that our software-hardware integration
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15 phases have gone much smoother thanks to our unit tests.
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16
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17 Sadly it seems CxxTest is no longer actively supported. However this is not of great
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18 concern to us. The code is so small we are fairly confident we could tweak it if necessary.
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19
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20 I recently discovered Fructose_, a unit testing framework written by Andrew Marlow. It too
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21 has similar goals of being small and simple to use. One thing I noticed that CxxTest had that
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22 Fructose did not was a Python code generator that took care of creating the ``main()`` function
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23 and registering all the tests with the framework. Since C++ has very little introspection
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24 capabilities, C++ unit testing frameworks have historically laid the burden of registering
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25 tests on the programmer. Some use macros to help with this chore, but littering your code
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26 with ugly macros makes tests annoying to write. And if anything, you want your tests to be
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27 easy to write so your colleagues will write lots of tests. CxxTest approached this problem by
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28 providing first a Perl script, then later a Python script, to automate this part of the process.
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29
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30 I decided it would be interesting to see if I could provide such a script for Fructose. After
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31 a Saturday of hacking, I'm happy to say Andrew has accepted the script and it now ships with
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32 Fructose version 1.1.0. I hope to improve the script to not only run all the tests but to also
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33 print out a summary of the number of tests that passed and failed at the end, much like CxxTest does.
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34 This will require some changes to the C++ code. Also on my wish list is to make the script
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35 extensible, so that others can easily change the output and code generation to suit their needs.
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36
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37 I've hosted the code for the Python script, which I call ``fructose_gen.py`` on Bitbucket_.
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38 Feedback is greatly appreciated.
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39
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40 .. _CxxTest: http://cxxtest.tigris.org/
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41 .. _Fructose: http://fructose.sourceforge.net/
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42 .. _Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/bgneal/fructose_gen/src
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