Elliote and all, Regarding the JUnit3 provider in Surefire, my colleagues deleted it a week ago without a notion that it is not only JUnit3. It contained POJO as well testing which means that you can test without any framework. Yes, JUnit3 did not need to have a touch for years as I remember because it was a simple and stable Provider. Bad luck, I would say! So this is what I always say, yeah, the people like raising their hands up, but the problem is that they have no notion about consequences, and then nobody would like to take responsibilities, and this is not only the IT, it's everywhere in every area of humans all around the world, it's like a sickness, and then it's bad. I am very sad! IMHO the deletion of JUnit3 Provider should be reverted back.
On Fri, Oct 3, 2025 at 2:11 PM Elliotte Rusty Harold <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Oct 2, 2025 at 9:21 AM Sandra Parsick <[email protected]> wrote: > > > My 2ct to the JUnit 3 discussion: > > > > The last release of JUnit 3 was 2007. 18 years ago! I think that is > > enough time for a migration :o). I know manual migration sucks. But > > fortunately, nowadays we have tools like OpenRewrite [2] that can > > automate the happy part and help automate the custom part [3]. Of > > course, it depends on your customization how big the manual part will > > stay. But hey, that is the known consequence of customizing. > > To be honest, if you have no problem staying on JUnit 3 then you should > > be okay to stay on an older Surefire plugin version that supports JUnit > 3. > > You say that like it’s a bad thing. JUnit 3 is a mature, battle > tested, and bug free product that fully serves its purpose. It works > in essentially all versions of Java in use today (I think minimum is > Java 1.1?)) and is thoroughly documented, supported, and understood. > There haven’t been releases since 2007 because it hasn’t needed a > release since 2007. > > If you want reliable, bug free software, you need to know when to > stop. Chasing the new shiny is not sufficient reason to release. If > there’s nothing that needs to be done, (and for JUnit 3 there isn’t), > then nothing is precisely what you should do. I’ve talked more > extensively about this here: > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdoUNQTDE_U&t=3745s > > JUnit 4 and 5 do not improve on JUnit 3, or each other. They are > simply two more ways to do the same thing. The improvements I see that > help developers test code are in supplementary libraries like assert4j > or Guava Testlib, not the core frameworks. So if a project wants to > keep using JUnit 3, it should. Burning developer time upgrading is > irrational. > > -- > Elliotte Rusty Harold > [email protected] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > >
