Simonson, Lucanus J wrote:
Thomas Klimpel wrote:
- The unit-tests should be split into smaller files and use a nonzero exit value to indicate failure. They should be placed in libs/polygon/test.
What granularity would you like to see the tests broken into?
It's OK from my point of view to have many tests in a single source file, as long as regression testing is still possible. My basic assumption is that any unit-test can potentially fail, so it's not good if a single failing unit-test will mask many other unrelated test results. The typical reaction in such a situation would be to comment out the failing unit-test, which bears its own risks... One point to consider when writing unit-tests for a template library is that the compiler will not even find simple typos as long as a template function is not instantiated and called with a concrete type (Try this yourself: Change line 207 of interval_concept.hpp from "high(interval, (newHigh));" to "hhigh(interval, (newHigh));", and see if you can find a compiler that will detect this typo when compiling your current unit-tests.). So I probably would put pure "compile" tests into different source files than real functional tests. Having pure "compile" tests that just exercise every template function in the interface of a concept might be a good idea, especially if the test function is itself a template that is instantiated and called both for a class provided by the library and a custom class which registers as that concept. I also wouldn't object to have "compile" tests for more than one concept in a single source file. Don't forget the "use a nonzero exit value to indicate failure" advice for the functional tests. Even if you don't want to abort at the first failing test, ensure that the exit value is non-zero as soon as at least one test failed.
- Failing unit-tests should not be commented out just because they fail to compile.
I uncommented the handful of tests that I had commented out in the unit test source and these tests do compile and pass in MSVC9 and gcc4.2.2. The only tests commented out now are one which fails because the functionality isn't implemented (planed but not implemented functinality) and one that has long runtime and performs no functional testing.
After the custom_xxx.cpp examples failed to compile, I searched for "geometry_concept" in "gtl_boost_unit_test.cpp" and all occurrences of it were in code that was currently commented out. I searched again for "geometry_concept" after your modifications, but the corresponding code is still commented out. Regards, Thomas