The Pragmatic Programmer also has a lot of good things to say about this.

The majority of it involves building in tests as you go. Rather than writing a huge Windows application (as an example of something that's typically more difficult to test than a command line application), then backing in test-suite code, you should be designing the application with this in mind.

This might mean building in hooks where input can be taken from a file or a socket, rather than requiring a mouse to be clicked (there *are* scripting tools for testing, but that's a slightly different track).

Another fundamental concept is that as you write code for debugging, these tests remain. If the bug was there once, it's likely that it can recur. You've already written the test code, so why throw it away? Rather, incorporate it into the overall test suite.

Lotsa good ideas in that book...

--Chris

e-mail jcwren

In reply to (jcwren) RE: RE (tilly) 1: Regression testing by jcwren
in thread Regression testing by jplindstrom

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