Why We Refactored JUnit

Bill Venners writes "In this article, three programmers tell the story of how their frustration with JUnit's API led to the creation of Artima SuiteRunner, a free, open source test toolkit and JUnit runner. These programmers simply wanted to create a small add-on tool to JUnit, but found JUnit's design non-intuitive and API documention poor. After spending time reading through JUnit's source code and attempting to guess at the API contracts, they gave up and rewrote it."

Comments

Standard litmus test

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Explaining one's actions in a detailed and public manner is self-incriminating.

I wonder what really went on behind the scenes here.

Re:it's all about compatibility

[First_In_Hell]

You have no right to download "free" software. If you are going to leech of off the hard work of others then you are adding nothing to the community. Be a man and contribute something.

My Complaint with JUnit

[SlashdotComplainer]

On behalf of several members of the community, I would like to express my shock and disappointment at some of JUnit's intimations. Let's get down to business: It's easy enough to hate JUnit any day of the week on general principles. But now I'll tell you about some very specific things that JUnit is up to, things that ought to make a real JUnit-hater out of you. First off, it says that it holds a universal license that allows it to twist our entire societal valuation of love and relationships beyond all insanity. Yet it also wants to inspire a recrudescence of obnoxious fatuity. Am I the only one who sees the irony there? I ask, because I am aware that many people may object to the severity of my language. But is there no cause for severity? Naturally, I believe that there is, because there is a cost, a cost too high to calculate, for messing with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people. I mean, think about it. Common-sense understanding of human nature tells us that nefarious mawkish-types speak in order to conceal -- or at least to veil -- their thoughts. Now that's a rather crude and simplistic statement, and, in many cases, it may not even be literally true. But there is a sense in which it is generally true, a sense in which it truly expresses how I don't need to tell you that I, not being one of the many mephitic crybabies of this world, don't know how JUnit can be so harebrained. That should be self-evident. What is less evident is that if one accepts the framework I've laid out here, it follows that JUnit has a natural talent for complaining. It can find any aspect of life and whine about it for hours upon hours.

It's easy for armchair philosophers to theorize about JUnit and about hypothetical solutions to our JUnit problem. It's an entirely more difficult matter, however, when one considers that its values are piteous but reflective of the localized normative attitudes among disagreeable urban guerrillas. To pretend otherwise is nothing but hypocrisy and unwillingness to face the more unpleasant realities of life. For the nonce, JUnit is content to make serious dialogue difficult or impossible. But sometime soon, it will set the wolf to mind the sheep. Stick your nose into anything JUnit has written recently, and you'll get a good whiff of witless stoicism. JUnit says that it is a bearer and agent of the Creator's purpose. The inference is that the best way to make a point is with foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric and letters filled primarily with exclamation points. I'm happy to report that I can't follow that logic. Anyway, that's it for this letter. Let JUnit read it and weep.