From: Intransition <transfire@...>
Date: 2010-06-19T19:14:14+09:00
Subject: Re: What kind of testing for executables?



On Jun 19, 1:05 am, "R.. Kumar" <sentinel1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thomas Sawyer wrote:
> > What kind of testing is it when you test a projects executables:
> > system/functional or integration?
>
> Is this about the terminology ?
>
> I'd like to know what tools are being used for testing command-line
> programs ?
>
> I looked around to see samples of shoulda in command line gems but could
> not find any. Currently, I am using a shell program (without a name or
> repo) written by the git people (Junio Hamano) to test git. I used it to
> test a shell app I wrote, and now I an using it for a ruby command line
> app.
>
> Sadly, it compares the standard output of a program - expected vs
> actual. Which means every time I tweak or improve the output, my tests
> fail. It ignores stderr. But otherwise it serves my purpose a lot -- far
> better than no auto testing.
>
> If this is OT, I could start a new thread for that.

No worries. I use either Cucumber (with Aruba) or QED.

And yes, checking the $stdout is part of test assertions, but I keep
it to specific snippets not the whole output, via
'out.index(pattern)'.