--- "Mark R. Diggory" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/math/clover/index.html
I have to say, I'm very impressed with the clover test coverage tool. This report is very cool and shows us exactly where coverage is low.
However, I'm not convinced that test coverage = quality assurance. One could easily write tests that cause test coverage to score high while not being very informative in and of themselves.
That's one of the overarching lessons in software testing. There are some pre-existing tests for commons.lang.StringUtils.split(*) that pass regardless of how I order two operations in code I submitted in a patch yesterday.So while the tests seem to exercise those methods and thus provide test coverage, only one out of the three relevant tests is sensitive to those changes, which makes me nervous about both the tests and what the lack of sensitivity to changes says about the code (both the pre-existing code and my patch), because it seems like the logic should be different depending on the task ordering.
If you can improve the data coverage of the tests, please submit patches. I agree that path converage is necessary but not sufficient for good tests. As bugs are identified, test cases should be added to cover the conditions leading to the failures.
You may be interested in reading "How to Misuse Code Coverage" from Brian Marick's http://www.testing.com/writings.html .
Al
===== Albert Davidson Chou
Get answers to Mac questions at http://www.Mac-Mgrs.org/ .
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
