[icedtea-web] RFC: add unit tests for the jnlp parser

[Omair Majid]

On 03/23/2011 08:45 PM, Dr Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> On 16:26 Wed 23 Mar     , Deepak Bhole wrote:
>> * Omair Majid<omajid at redhat.com>  [2011-03-22 15:09]:
>>> The unit tests rely on the testng framework. The patch adds optional
>>> dependencies on testng, qdox and bsh for running these unit tests. I
>>> have also added a dependency on xlst for transforming the test
>>> output into a more jtreg-like format (useful for the buildbots)
>>>
>>> I also looked into using junit for these tests, but junit's command
>>> line output is rather limited. To generate xml output, ant is
>>> required as well.

> Well, before I even look at the patch, I want to be sure all this additional
> crap is needed.  I've never even heard of any of these and having them all
> as requirements is going to make it less likely that people will run tests.
>
> Are there no simpler solutions?  I do remember junit was fairly self-contained
> the last time I used it, but that was circa 2003.

I am not too familiar with all the testing frameworks out there. I have 
only used junit myself (and now I have dabbled in testng). These tests 
have two target audiences - those building icedtea-web (especially the 
buildbots) and programmers. Both need command line output to tell if the 
tests are failing/passing.

Naturally, I tried out junit first. I ran into an issue: it doesn't have 
any good textual output (and does not support any formatting, though its 
IDE-integration is quite good). It only shows tests failures, and a one 
line summary for the entire test suite. There is no way to get 
jtreg-like output. This is probably more of a concern for the buildbot 
than anything else.

I can work around it by writing a front end to it (already done, but I 
am not sure about the licensing here), or using something like ant to 
generate xml output which can be transformed (similar to how I have done 
it for testng) to text.

The second thing I tried was testng. This, of course, ends up requiring 
a number of jars that the builders may not have, though most 
distributions have testng packages.

Any preferences on what to do? Should I just give up on formatting text 
results to be more jtreg-like? That would make it much simpler (and we 
will be able to use junit). Any other suggestions for test frameworks or 
how to make this work?

Thanks,
Omair