[tpm] April Meeting - Thu 26 Apr, 2007 - Component-focused Testing and Test-Driven Development

[Michael Graham]

This month we two speakers on testing related subjects!

(These details are also on the TPM web site: http://to.pm.org/)

    Date:   Thursday 26 Apr 2006

    Time:   6:45pm

   Where:   2 Bloor Street West (NW corner of Yonge/Bloor, skyscraper
            with the CIBC logo on top) Classroom TBA

  ===================================================================

Talk Details:

 Speaker #1: Jim Keenan
      Title: Component-Focused Testing: The Case of the Parrot Build
             Tools

   Duration: 40 minutes

Description: 

    Installation of an open-source software package such as Perl or a
    CPAN module generally follows a 4-step process: configure, build,
    test, install. Although 'make test' is usually thought of as the
    place where all the testing happens, the successful completion of
    each of the other stages implicitly constitutes the passing of a
    functional test. But does there exist a place for a type of test
    which is not included in the 'test' target but instead is run either
    before the 'configure' stage or between the 'configure' and 'build'
    stages?

    In this talk, Jim argues that there is a role for such tests and he
    describes how he has implemented a number of test suites, run post-
    configure but pre-build, for those of Parrot's build tools written
    in Perl 5. Such tests encourage provide more rapid feedback on the
    results of refactoring than 'make test' can. Indeed, they encourage
    Phalanx-style refactoring which makes the build tools more
    maintainable over the long run.

  -------------------------------------------------------------------

 Speaker #2: Henry Baragar 
      Title: Test Driven Design: Or How I Learned to Love the KISS
             Principle

   Duration: 40 minutes

Description: 

    Test Driven Development is a practice that can be used to improve
    software quality by writing tests before writing code.  Applied
    properly, this practice can be extended to the design activities as
    well as code construction.  In other words, it is practical to
    organically grow an application from an acorn to a mighty oak
    without doing any up front design work.  

    To demonstrate Test Driven Design, Henry will walk through the
    evolution of a real world example.  He will discuss the techniques,
    examine some interesting and unexpected observations, and present
    statistics from personal use.   Finally, the example will be
    developed using Jifty so that you may gain some exposure and insight
    into this interesting and cutting edge application framework.

  ===================================================================

  Note:

    The elevators in the building are "locked down" after 5:30pm
    to people without building access cards.  Leading up to the
    meeting someone will come down to the main floor lobby every
    few minutes to ferry people upstairs.

    After 19:00, you can reach the access-card-carrying guy via
    a cell phone number that we'll leave with security in the
    front lobby.  The room and floor numbers will be left with
    security too.



-- 
Michael Graham <magog at the-wire.com>