in reply to Functional and Unit Test Redundancy

"If you have a good set of functional tests, is it necessary to write unit tests?".

YES, unit tests shall be applied to each module before functional tests, even before the whole system/program is ready. And should save a lot of debugging time.

As matija suggested above a good set of functional tests guarantee that the product works fine for the time being. However, consider future extentions - individual units may become exposed to inputs you have never dreamt of.

But if you are limited in your time - consider writing "release notes".

  • Comment on Re: Functional and Unit Test Redundancy

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Re: Re: Functional and Unit Test Redundancy
by saintbrie (Scribe) on May 08, 2004 at 22:26 UTC
    Could you give an example of what you would consider good "release notes" or good use of "release notes"?
[reply]

      IMO, "release notes" are the part of documentaions which lists known bugs/issues of the product. All the minor and not-so-minor flaws which there were no resources to fix in that version, but should be fixed in next releases. "RN" should be the summary, with details included in more appropriate part. The lack of unit test to any module should be mentioned here.

      In your case, the part of the documentation that describes tests shuold have a discussion of what the functional tests could not cover and why.

      There is one more problem you should bear in mind turning down unit tests - any reuse of any part of your code is questionable. It could be easier to write it from scratch than to use yours.

      Mind that it is my private opinion of what good "release notes" are.

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