Hi all, I tried to produce a concept for some automated JUnit test, with the intent to quickly uncover regressions during wholesale refactoring. I came up with http://cvs.apache.org/~pietsch/FopTest.java sample control file at http://cvs.apache.org/~pietsch/regression.xml
Overview: the control file holds a source, a MD5 for it so you can detect test failures caused by a changed source rather than a regression easier and a MD5 for the result file. If the test runs through, all is well. If a test fails, you can investigate the file and see whether the change was a regression (fix it) or an improvement (update the MD5 for the result).
Problems:
- PDFInfo unconditionally puts the creation time into the
PDF. This thwarts the whole thing. On my machine I can
disable it temporarily, but there should be a more
sustainable solution. Ideas:
o pass a flag to the renderer which inhibits creation time
creation
o pass a creation date value (can be abused, but abusers can
implement it anyway)
o patch it in the result array before digesting (hack alert)
- Source FO line endings: both CVS and ZIP may alter them,
making the source MD5 invalid. I'm not sure whether FixCRLF
can be of use here. Either way, running the tests from Eclipse
unprepared could be a bad idea. Possible fixes:
o have two MD5 in the control one for the source with CRLF,
one with LF only. Makes updating more unconvenient.
o use another FilterStream to transform CRLF->LF before
digesting. Adds unwanted complexity, but probably the way
to go...
- Hidden regressions: a checksum mismatch does not necesarily
cause a visible problem, lets say the author string gets spaces
appended or such. For proper inspection of failures we probably
need a more sophisticated tool than simply display two PDFs
side-by-side. For a starter, a sort of PDF diff which extracts
the streams, uncompresses and displays mismatches with a bit of
context would certainly be valuable. Any takers?Comments?
J.Pietschmann
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