Section 18.7. Automation of Tests

18.7. Automation of Tests

Finally, our design of Fit tables has to take account of the way they are used as automated tests.

• Once the number of Fit tests grows, you'll need to organize them. You can save much time in finding and running tests, by organizing them into test suites. For example, organize related tests into a folder (Section 7.2) or a FitNesse subwiki (Section 8.3).

• Don't make assumptions about the order in which the tests will be run, as that order is sure to change one day to cause trouble. Each Fit test should stand alone and be able to run independently. Thus, each test usually needs to start from a known state.^[5] We've seen in Section 10.4 on p. 76 and in Section 18.3.4 how we can use SetUpFixture tables to set up the state required.

  ^[5] Some calculation tests may be independent of the state of the system under test.

• Provide useful feedback if a complex test fails, to help sort out whether the test or the system under test is at fault. For example, the FitNesse system comes with a set of acceptance tests, many of which provide feedback on the page that's being tested. DoFixture provides a show special action. (Programmers, see Section 28.6 on p. 237, for using it to display extra information within a test.)