CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaunit-testingantjunittdd
PovilasB
PovilasB

Reputation: 1608

Compiling sources only required by specific tests

I have a java project and i'm trying to do TDD.

My problem is when I'm about to change API of one class, I edit its tests, then the class itself. But there might be a bunch of other classes using the first class I edited.

So I would like compile this one class and its dependecies only. And then run the tests in such minimal environment.

Here's an example. My project structure prototype:

.
|_ build.xml
|_ lib/
| |_ *.jar
|_ src/
| |_ myPackage/
|   |_ ClassA.java 
|   |_ ClassB.java
|   |_ ClassC.java
|_ test/
  |_ myPackage/
    |_ ClassATest.java
    |_ ClassBTest.java

ClassA uses ClassC. ClassA.java:

import myPackage.ClassC;
...

Now after the API changes in ClassA I would like to run its tests, but without compiling ClassB. So I want to compile only ClassA and ClassC.

I'm using Ant for builds. I found a similar answer in here. But in this case I have to manually specify which classes to compile:

<javac srcdir="${src.dir}" destdir="${build.dir}" classpathref="classpath">
    <include name="src/myPackage/ClassA.java"/>
    <include name="src/myPackage/ClassC.java"/>
</javac>

My goals are:

  1. Be able to run all tests separately. E.g. ant test-ClassA.
  2. Make Ant automatically resolve dependencies. Meaning, when I build tests for ClassA it also compiles ClassC.
  3. Make Ant to build test targets automatically for every test suite in test dir. In my case it would be test-ClassA and test-ClassB.

Is it possible to achieve any of those goals with Ant? Or maybe you have better suggestions about running tests?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 58

Answers (1)

Mike Stockdale
Mike Stockdale

Reputation: 5266

Make your initial changes to ClassA non-breaking - e.g. if you're changing a method, at first make a copy of the method with a new name but leave the old method unchanged. When you have successfully developed and tested the changes, then you can change the users of ClassA.

Upvotes: 1

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