Re: [xsl] XSLT Unit Testing and Coverage

["Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

First, I think we need to be clear what we mean by "unit testing". I've seen
some projects where people have large numbers of tests for purely internal
functions and methods. I've never seen much point in that, and it can greatly
increase the cost of doing internal refactoring. On the other hand, having
lots of tests for external functionality can be very useful indeed. For XSLT,
that means tests of complete stylesheets, rather than tests of individual
functions and templates.

If you are changing your system to use a new technology, e.g. changing XSLT
processor or changing from XSLT 1.0 to 2.0, then having a good set of test
material for your stylesheets turns it from a very high-risk undertaking to a
very low-risk one. It also greatly reduces the risk of making enhancements to
your stylesheets, e.g to incorporate enhancements to the source document
schema. So it is something I would recommend every project to have.

Whether you do this with an off-the-shelf framework like XSpec or with a
home-grown test approach matters less.

Michael Kay
Saxonica

On 28 May 2014, at 19:57, Vasudev Kandhadai vasu.kandhadai@xxxxxxxxx
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Dear All,
> is there a good reason to deploy a XSLT unit testing framework? I have never
seen any serious XSLT dev env where the XSLT unit testing was either done
religiously, or considered mandatory.  Other than a very religious Java
development team with strict Junit set up with Maven etc, who have adopted
XSLT into their dev env, who would now want to extend the same ideologies to
the XSLT world?  I have personally never used or utilized practically any XSLT
unit testing framework in any project and nor was there any requirement to do
so...
>
> So considering we need to do this, I came across,
> XSPEC, XUnit etc.. Xspec seems like a good one,  but doesnt look like a lot
of discussions are  happening in the community.. The Coverage feature doesnt
work ...
> The class is not being maintained.
>
> Cakupan, was very hard on my brains to read the manual.. Again something
that has been out there for a while and not sure it is still maintained /
supported.
>
> Does anyone has any ideas on what options we have in the XML world for
> XSL Unit Testing + Coverage Report
>
> I tried posting to the Xspec community but no one bothered to answer my
questions , so I am inclined to think it is dead.
>
> Somehow I am also inclined to think Coverage feature is a very Java/C#/C/C++
paradigm... Doesnt make too much sense with the XSLT world?
>
> Your inputs are valuable.
> Kandha.
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