Unit Test Frameworks

Preface

This book presents a comprehensive review of the xUnit family of unit test frameworks, including their usage, architecture, and theory. We begin by building a simple unit test framework from the ground up. The xUnit architecture is presented, using the JUnit framework as the reference implementation of xUnit. We progressively build an example application to demonstrate common practices and patterns of unit test development. Several popular versions of xUnit, including JUnit, CppUnit, NUnit, PyUnit, and XMLUnit, are covered in detail. Detailed class references are provided for JUnit and CppUnit as appendixes.

As a software development methodology, unit testing incorporates many rules and guidelines. However, writing unit tests is an art, not a science. Once you are familiar with the unit test driven approach to development, rigidly following its rules is optional. The true value of unit testing is in the focus on low-level software quality it gives developers, rather than as a formal process.

Audience

This book is intended for software developers, technical managers, and quality assurance staff who are learning about unit testing and agile development. Agile development is the wave of the future in software engineering, and many technical organizations are adopting it. Using unit test frameworks to enable test driven development is a key to becoming agile.

Contents of This Book

Here is a summary of the topics covered in each chapter and appendix:

Chapter 1

An overview that explains ...