Software Carpentry QMTest Testing Tool Released

soundsop writes: "The first tool resulting from the winners of a design competition by the Software Carpentry project has been released. The QMTest tool is a testing tool to replace software such as XUnit, Expect and DejaGnu. An issue tracking tool, called QMTrack (a la Bugzilla) is forthcoming. It looks like the winning design proposals for a config tool (autoconf replacement) and a build tool (make replacement) are not being implemented."

Comments

Re:What exactly does this do?

[Harumuka]

SC Test aims to produce regression testing software. This basically means that when software has new features added, regression testing tests to make sure it hasn't taken a step backwards (regressed). In plain english, regression testing tries to prevent new features from introducing bugs. A good introduction to regression testing is at AutomatedQA, although the software there is commerical their few words on regression testing are well worth reading.

This is what Webopedia has to say on the subject:

The selective retesting of a software system that has been modified to ensure that any bugs have been fixed and that no other previously-working functions have failed as a result of the reparations and that newly added features have not created problems with previous versions of the software. Also referred to as verification testing, regression testing is initiated after a programmer has attempted to fix a recognized problem or has added source code to a program that may have inadvertently introduced errors. It is a quality control measure to ensure that the newly-modified code still complies with its specified requirements and that unmodified code has not been affected by the maintenance activity.

an HTML user interface

[markj02]

I have written a lot of test cases in my time. I can't quite figure out why I would want to use QMTest.

First, I like writing test cases in a text editor, programmatically. It's tedious enough writing them in the first place, at least I can cut-and-paste and modify them quickly in an editor. Going through a web GUI does not seem like it's very efficient. Also, I don't particularly like using anything other than the implementation language and shell scripts for test cases; otherwise, people receiving the source code need to install additional tools. I also don't see anything in the white paper about support for the hard parts of testing, like configuration and compilation management for lots of extra C/C++ code, GUI testing, or web site testing (the latter usually require recording and playback).

Altogether, I'm not sure I ever felt I needed something like what QMTest seems to be doing. And the things that are actually difficult to test, it doesn't seem to provide useful support for. Can someone explain what I'm missing?

Here's why

[devphil]

So they've gathered a lot of requirements and done a lot design, but, as the lady says, "Where's the beef?" Why do all this work to replace open source tools that already exist? Why not take those tools and contribute back to them, or if the project owners don't like the contributions, take the things they like and build from there?

The original Software Carpentry site had an excellent page explaining the reason for the whole project, but I can't find it. So I'll summarize and paraphrase from memory:

Because the original tools suck ass, that's why.

There was a great quote on the SC page, something to the effect that "when experienced *nix developers say that tools are easy to use, they really just mean that they've grown enough scar tissue that using those tools is no longer painful." I'm a long-time Old School *nix user, and I agree. Try teaching these "easy to use" tools to beginners and watch their faces contort.

Take make for example: we start with a syntax that seems custom-designed to fuck with the mind (so, rules have to be indented by one tab (why? don't ask why, they just have to be; probably because parsing was too slow back then without a leading marker character), so if you use eight spaces instead you'll get some useless error message, even though there's nothing visually apparently wrong.

Each command gets executed in a separate shell. That's always fun for beginners, and trips up experts too, until you build up enough scar tissue that ending all the commands with ";\" seems perfectly natural.

The POSIX specification for make requirements are unfortunately too weak to accomplish anything. An implementation of make must have some extensions in order to be useful. So we have a way to include other makefiles, but it's spelled differently for different versions. GNU make has some funky builtin pattern expanders, BSD make has some funky looping constructs -- and neither camp is willing to merge.

The SC project was going to replace all that crap with a tool of equal power that actually makes sense to a beginner, rather than looking like the dog's breakfast of features that make currently is.

(I, too, long for Subversions and the other Tigris projects to come to fruition.)