Unit testing framework

Last week we started implementing a unit testing framework for Xaraya, which is highly integrated with the bitkeeper repository.

As of now it allows you to register testsuites and testcases which can be run once or repeatedly with bk tests

I expected this to be an investment for the long run. The longer we used it, sometimes the tests would fail and we could fix things more quickly.

To my surprise the tests started failing basically right from the beginning, even when very premature code was available. Both bugs in the testframework as in the codebase itself showed up immediately.

I found that the crux to this is that having a test framework puts your mind in a different state. While developing you're trying to make things work, while writing tests you're trying to make things break. This combination has worked already in the early stages, i can hardly wait to see how this is going to work when the number of tests starts to grow and we actually use that information in our process.

The scepsis has gone, unit testing rocks!