test framework

Somebody once said that Lispniks have been the first agile developers, doing the stuff people now all go mad about decades ago without thinking twice. So maybe it isn't very surprising that there are quite a lot of tools that help with test driven development.

See also Test framework comparison.

Known Common Lisp Test Frameworks on CLiki include:

ASDF-Install-Tester - ASDF-Install-tester is a development tool and ASDF-Extension that automates the process of checking whether or not ASDF-Installable systems actually install under ASDF
cl-quickcheck - cl-quickcheck is a test framework for automatic specification-based testing
cl-smoketest - cl-smoketest is a small test framework for setting up basic does-it-compile tests
CL-TEST-MORE - CL-TEST-MORE is a unit test framework inspired by Perl's Test::More
cl-unit-test - cl-unit-test bootstraps quality and it has been tested by itself with 100% test code coverage
clos-unit - Basically a port of JUnit to Common Lisp, probably deprecated in favor of xlunit
CLUnit - CLUnit is a Test Framework that comes with CLOCC
CUSTOM-HARNESS - CUSTOM-HARNESS is yet another test harness framework for Common Lisp code
de.setf.utility - de setf utility is a collection of Common Lisp utilities functions and several purpose-specific libraries
EnclineTest - EnclineTest (etest) is a unit test framework, developed within Encline project
Eos - Eos is a drop-in replacement for the FiveAM Test Framework that is portable Common Lisp and has no dependencies on other libraries
FiveAM - FiveAM is a Test Framework whose goal is to be as simple as possible
FReT - FReT (Framework for Regression Testing) is a unit test framework with interactive testing and authoring of tests
LIFT - The LIsp Framework for Testing is another test framework in the JUnit / SUnit lineage
lisp-unit - lisp-unit is a simple Common Lisp Test Framework
MSL-Test - MSL-Test is Paul Foley's Test Framework
NST - NST is a test framework for Common Lisp offering separate and reusable fixture definitions, test groups, extensible test criteria, ASDF integration, and optional JUnit XML output
portch - Portch is a test framework for organizing and running tests written with ptester [the portable version of Franz's tester library]
ptester - ptester is a portable version of Franz's tester library
RT - Short for "regression testing", an older (last update 1995)
rtch - rtch is a hackbrary which facilitates organizing tests in the RT test framework in a directory hierarchy
Stefil - Stefil is a test framework, and its philosophy is to stay as transparent as possible, disrupting the normal Lisp application development process as little as possible
testbild - testbild implements TAP (Test Anything Protocol) (versions 12, 13) and xUnit output so you can connect your Lisp tests to other programs
tester - tester is the test framework harness that Franz uses for Allegro CL (ACL)
unit-test - unit-test is a Test Framework by Alan Picard
xlunit - XLUnit is a Test Framework based on XPTest and JUnit
XPTEST - delete this page

Like COVER: Common Lisp test case coverage determination tool.

clos-unit ( clos-unit appears to be deprecated in favor of xlunit which has almost the same semantics ) are basically implementations of the *Unit design (like JUnit, SUnit etc), where a test case (and a test fixture, there isn't much differentiation) is a CLOS class, and the individual tests are its methods. Failure of a test is usually indicated by calls to some assertion forms or by signaling an appropriate condition.

FiveAM seems to offer similar functionality, but handles it in another fashion. For example, setting up and tearing down a fixture isn't done with defining methods for a test-case class, but with a WITH-FIXTURE macro which simply wraps one piece of code with another.

rt is an older library from the CMU AI repository. It takes a more simplistic approach, a single test is made up of its name, a form to evaluate, and the expected return values of this form. CLUnit takes a similar approach, but with a lot more sugar, like collecting and classifying tests, giving a comparison function to match the real with the expected output etc.

testbild is not a test framework but a library designed to be used by the former that harmonizes test output styles and grants the powers of TAP.

Pages in this topic: ASDF-Install-Tester cl-quickcheck cl-smoketest CL-TEST-MORE cl-unit-test clos-unit CLUnit CUSTOM-HARNESS de.setf.utility EnclineTest Eos FiveAM FReT LIFT lisp-unit MSL-Test NST portch ptester RT rtch Stefil testbild tester unit-test xlunit XPTEST

Also linked from: development Test Frameworks testing

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