Griffon 0.9 sneak peek: testing upgrades

Continuing the peek parade (previous entries on command line features and application archetypes) we'll look at what's new regarding testing in Griffon.

The first thing you'll notice is that executing tests is done in the same way as in Grails. This is because Griffon's build system has been refreshed with the latest Grails 1.3.2 codebase. Now you can run all tests using the same phase:type mechanism that Grails has. Griffon has 3 phases (unit, integration and other) and two default types (unit and integration). Those two types are actually JUnit based tests cases, it has been pointed out that perhaps those types should be coalesced into a single one: junit.

Say you'd like to run all JUnit tests in the unit phase, this is what you must type

griffon test-app :unit

On the other hand, if what you want is to exercise all unit tests regardless of their type, then invoke the following command

griffon test-app unit:

Speaking of types, there are two additional types provided by plugins. The first type is easyb and the second is spock. Both plugins are direct port of their corresponding Grails counterparts (which speaks volumes in terms of compatibility between Grails and Griffon, doesn't it?). New versions of these plugins will be ready once Griffon 0.9 ships.

Back to test-app. this command is very flexible with its options. Do you need to run all tests that affect all services?

griffon test-app *Service

What if what you want is to run all tests that are related to the same artifact?

griffon test-app FooController

You can also specify package names and even run a single test method, like this

griffon test-app com.acme.Factory.testMakeAnvil

All this is possible to the great efforts made by Luke Daley in the Grails codebase (with a big help from the rest of the Grails team too: Graeme, Peter, Jeff and Burt).

Following into testing related plugins, there are 4 other direct ports of Grails plugins into Griffon

Code-Coverage - this one existed since the early days, however it has been synchronized to the latest codebase from its Grails counterpart
Clover - s/grails/griffon/ did the trick for this one, just like that.
CodeNarc - static code analysis for Groovy source? you bet!
GMetrics - measures the size and complexity of your codebase

The FEST plugin has been upgraded to FEST 1.2 and received a major facelift, it even provides an Spock spec in case you'd like to mix Spock and FEST. FindBugs joins the set of testing related plugins too.

All in all, Griffon will help you to keep the bar green and bugs in check.

Keep on Groovying!

Griffon 0.9 sneak peek: testing upgrades

Posted by: Andres Almiray on July 6, 2010

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