GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata/texttests

TextTest regression tests

This folder contains Text-Based Approval tests for the GildedRose Refactoring Kata.

These tests are designed to be used with the open source testing tool "TextTest", available from http://texttest.org.

Step-by-step instructions

These tests are quite good and it's worth trying them.

Install TextTest

There are install instructions on texttests website. If you are happy to run without the Graphical User Interface, then you only need python3 and pip:

> pip install texttest

Configure language version

Before you can run the tests you need to tell texttest which language version of GildedRose you plan to refactor. Open the file 'config.gr' and edit it. Several languages are supported. All lines starting with '#' are comments in this file. Find the lines referring to the language you want, and uncomment them.

Note: by default the 'python' version is selected. You'll need to comment those lines out if you have chosen a different langauge.

While you're here, change the settings for editor and diff program to match your preferences. By default it uses 'subl' and 'meld'. It will accept any editors or diff programs that you can run from the command line.

running TextTest

Start texttest from the folder above the one this file is in. Texttest detects the current working directory and uses that as the variable $TEXTTEST_HOME in the config.gr file.

# replace this path with wherever you cloned this repo
> cd /home/ec2-user/workspace/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata 
> texttest &

This should start the GUI for the TextTest tool.

From the GUI, select the test case "ThirtyDays" and press the "Run" button. This will open a new 'runner' window for each test run.

If the texttest GUI doesn't work, or you prefer to use the command line, use this instead:

> texttest -con

That will run all the test cases it finds and report the results.

Running without TextTest

This should be perfectly possible, but is probably less convenient than using TextTest.

Write a script that will execute the system under test (see "config.gr" for details of the executables), giving the commandline options listed in "options.gr". Collect the output from standard output in a file, and diff that against the golden copy "stdout.gr". Any diff is a test failure.

TextTest test cases

Each test case has it's own subdirectory. The name of the directory is the name of the test - in this case "ThirtyDays". The "Golden Copy" of the output for that test case is kept in that directory. In this case we have three files:

• stderr.gr - the expected output to Standard Error (stderr)
• stdout.gr - the expected output to Standard Output (stdout)
• options.gr - the options to give on the command line when you run the System Under Test (SUT)

In the directory above, there are configuration files for TextTest:

• config.gr - this tells TextTest where to find the SUT executable, and sets up options for how it runs the SUT and interprets the output.
• environment.gr - this file lists environment variables that will be set before TextTest runs the SUT. This is especially important for Java applications, that must set the CLASSPATH environment variable in order to run properly.
• testsuite.gr - lists the constituent test cases of this suite. Change the order of the entries here to change the order they appear in the TextTest GUI.

To run a test, click on it in the GUI and select "Run". TextTest will run it in a temporary (sandbox) directory and report the results. If the test fails, you can double click on a file to see the diff against the Golden Copy.

If you run into difficulties with TextTest, there is documentation available on texttest.org, or you can ask a question on the mailing list.