[vtk-developers] VTK Code Coverage

[David Cole]

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 8:35 AM, Nikhil Shetty <nikhil.shetty at kitware.com> wrote:
> Hi Bill,
>
> Are you planning to bring in some type of Unit Testing into VTK?
>
> Currently each tests in VTK tests a bunch of different classes spread across
> different modules. An obvious disadvantage is that some parts of the code
> keeps getting tested multiple times which is sort of pointless (in terms of
> testing). With unit testing one could just focus on one class at at time.
>

+1 for unit tests...

BUT:
testing multiple times is not pointless -- there are limitless
possibilities of "combinations of stuff" -- and only with certain
combinations will you find some problem cases.

Testing as much as you have resources for (but no more) is ALWAYS a good idea.

Both are useful.


> Also a unit testing approach may be good for focused coverage where one is
> focused on improving coverage on a limited set of classes.
>
> There are many unit test frameworks out there. CppUnit seem to a good one.
>
> -Nikihl
>
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 5:43 PM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> My main concern is that vtk coverage is very low, and unacceptable.
>>
>> I would rather spend time on improving the coverage. If others want to
>> improve the process, that is great. Past experience shows that too much time
>> is spent on testing process and too little on actual testing.
>>
>> I say go for it, but I will concentrate in test coverage.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 5:34 PM, David Doria <daviddoria at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > Folks,
>>> >
>>> > I mentioned earlier that my Fall/Winter VTK project is improving code
>>> > coverage.
>>> >
>>> > I'm starting with some low hanging fruit, namely Common/Core which has
>>> > 19
>>> > files flagged by cdash as low coverage:
>>> > http://open.cdash.org/viewCoverage.php?buildid=2568829
>>> >
>>> > For example I just pushed this topic to gerrit that addresses testing
>>> > for
>>> > vtkTimePointUtilities, a class that has 0 coverage. I'm pretty sure
>>> > there
>>> > are bugs in this code, mainly surrounding boundary conditions that
>>> > would not
>>> > affect its usage, whatever that may be.
>>> > http://review.source.kitware.com/#/t/1295/
>>> >
>>> > But rather than rant, I'll ask the community to review the gerrit
>>> > topics.
>>> >
>>> > Bill
>>>
>>> This sounds like a great project.
>>>
>>> If you are going to be adding tons of tests, can we discuss a
>>> standardized format for them? The current method of putting everything
>>> in Test[TestName]() seems very error prone (accidental use of
>>> previously defined variables, name clashes, etc) and is definitely
>>> hard to read. I have pushed a new patch set that breaks some things
>>> out into functions. Is there any problem with doing it like this? It
>>> seems much more readable to me. In this case these functions are all
>>> void (because the content doesn't get checked for failure anyway), but
>>> of course they could return 'int' so that 'return EXIT_SUCCESS' could
>>> be ANDed with the other tests to produce the final test return value.
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>>> David
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Unpaid intern in BillsBasement at noware dot com
>>
>>
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