Originally posted by Lasse Koskela:
just wanted me to come and write some unit tests for them and that "they'll pick up from there, mimicking how I've written unit tests".
Lasse, this was the exact situation I am was in, but with one difference I work for a consulting firm. After explain the manager "Why it is not possible in a short duration?", the reply I got was "you may be correct, but we promised the client we would have x% unit test coverage?" So I figured out there is not point in explaining. At times I hate those "coverage reports", a most people (in management) tend to think these are real and not realize the background.
Originally posted by Jeanne Boyarsky:
Vinod,
JTest throws arguments at your code to try and break it (passing in nulls and the like.)
I think Agitator does the same thing. I was curious, though not convinced, on the usefulness of these tools over a period on time. I thought I would ask you guys.
Does the client really want unit test coverage in the true sense of the word?
This is the second time in 2 years I in this kind of situation, In the first (I was part of the client team) it was more to please the upper management. Knowledge level, I would say most of them (even large number of developers) were arguing the use of unit tests. For them it was another overhead.
Now, I think, this is more of a "Contractual thing", our company might have promised them the deliver code with unit test. Quality wise I suspect the do care, they just want good coverage report and the test should be using some open source tool (they don't want to pay). I am just planning to suggest them something that is probably unethical now?