Testing Strategies

Currently, Maven only supports unit testing out of the box. What we want is something flexible enough to work without having to make test definitions arbitrary.

Types of Tests

Unit Tests

run before package
want 100% success before moving on generally

Integration Tests

require the artifact, so run after package but before install.
generally want 100% before moving on.
May use junit or other plugin like cactus, including deploying to a server

Acceptance Tests

also called functional or regression tests.
not run every time, probably a report and/or part of a profile.
run after install, before deploy
Regression tests (acceptance tests from previous milestones) should be at 100%
acceptance (also called functional) tests only need to get to 100% at release time.
performance/stress tests - another form of acceptance test.

Use cases

plugin integration tests (c.f. eclipse plugin)
report integration tests (see Vincent S's work - htmlunit)
cactus plugin
geronimo itest plugin
need to be able to compile additional sources, have own dependencies (basically reapply the whole test lifecycle again - given that this also matches the main one, perhaps that can be reusable/forked)
we should have a setup and teardown phase around the actual test goal
may want to reapply test stuff on other test sets (eg junit report, clover)

separate project is ideal, but

a bit unnatural, more strung out
doesn't fit IDE well
you can still use it if you support in project tests, so better to do that

While a separate project might be something we recommend, I think we need to support them within the same project.

Design

Plugin integration tests

This means running a separate instance of Maven to do it effectively, so should always be separate projects utilising the built archive without requiring it be installed (bound to the integration test phase).

How can we ensure the integration test of the subproject is run before installation of the parent?
Perhaps it is better to have a plugin integration testing plugin that actually runs from the parent and execs maven on the subproject.

Report integration tests

This should be done in an identical fashion to a plugin integration test, but using htmlunit to test the output. This means having junit test cases.

Junit Integration Tests

We have an issue here in that we would have to recofigure the whole plugin, essentially needing to know its information. Can we preconfigure it, like we do with the forked lifecycles? Or is it best to just wire this one in by default to the integration testing parts of the lifecycle and use a different mojo (surefire:itest, compiler:itestCompile)?

TODO

Cactus Plugin

TODO

Junit Acceptance Tests

These would be set up in the same way as the junit integration tests except for the time at which they are run. The main difference may be that the default configuration would be to change the required acceptance to pass. It may be better to have a different plugin for these in general, but the default would also be surefire like above.

Reapplying junit report/clover to other test sets

TODO

Resources

maven-it-plugin in the sandbox
Discussion threads on Maven mailing list on the testing strategy
- http://www.nabble.com/Packaging-type-for-functional-integration-test-projects--t469087.html#a1278258
Related Article Best Practices - Testing Strategies