TestLint is a tool to automatically detect design flaws in the test-code a.k.a TestSmells: "what is good, what is bad"

Downloads

• All-inclusive Squeak-Image (Testing-xxxx-xx-xx.zip). Everything inside this image is supposed to be working, but sources are probably not up-to-date.
• Public MC packages on SqueakSource (SR): "TestSmells"
• Dynamic analysis requires ByteSurgeon to be installed.

Overview about TestSmells

• TestSmells in a Nutshell - highly compressed overview about TestSmells (1)
• Simple Statistics

Features of the current prototype:

• Rules for static and dynamic Analysis
  • Approx. 20 very well-working rules
  • Many more rules, yet unstable or too unprecise, ...
• Very small, flexible and extendable kernel/model
• Several browsers to access/browse the smelling nodes
• (beta) Visualizations using Mondrian
• Annotation of false-positives (not like in Lint yet)

Bugs:

• Slow, redundant, fuzzy, unstable rules
• Categorization
• Bad/slow Cache
• inconsistent rules (some return a reason, others don’t, ...)

Planned for future versions:

• Test-Framework independence
• Pragmas for annotations - like in Lint
• Enhancing the runtime - scope/context aware
• Rules
  • Duplication / Multiplication —> port Smalldude from VW to Squeak
  • Behavior block detection
  • Eager tests
  • Test coupling
• User Interface
• Notifications / Event System

References

• (1) My Master Thesis :)
• (2) Gerard Meszaros - "xUnit Test Patterns, Refactoring Test Code"
• (3) Bart Van Rompaey, Bart Du Bois and Serge Demeyer - "Characterizing the Relative Significance of a Test Smell"
• (4) Magiel Bruntink, Arie van Deursen - "Predicting Class Testability using Object-Oriented Metrics"
• (5) Arie van Deusen, Leon Moonen, Alex van de Bergh, Gerard Kok - "Refactoring Test Code"
• (6) Radu Marinescu - "Detection Strategies: Metrics-Based Rules for Detecting Design Flaws"
• (7) Michael D. Ernst - "Static and dynamic analysis: synergy and duality"

Web References

• http://www.Silvermark.org - Test Mentor / Presentation / Demo
• http://www.parasoft.com - JTest, CodeSniffer