Navigating Various Unit Test Frameworks
Distinguish between multiple unit testing frameworks used with various programming languages and application code frameworks.
Introduction
The basic principles of automated unit testing are agnostic to the programming language and testing framework used. However, to learn unit testing principles, unit tests must be written using one of the many programming languages and testing frameworks available. There are many testing frameworks available for any programming language. Although the principles of unit testing are consistent across various frameworks, the implementation details vary. Therefore, knowledge of one framework is easily transferable to another framework.
Sample unit testing landscape
Numerous unit test frameworks exist across a variety of languages and within any given language. The listing below shows the diverse landscape:
Unit Testing Framework Landscape
Programming Languages | |||||||||||
Some unit testing frameworks | Small Talk | C | C++ | C#,F,# Visual Basic | Fortran | Java | Javas-cript | PERL | PHP | Python | Ruby |
SUnit | Parasoft C/C++ test | Criterion | xUnit.net | FUnit | Jtest | JSUnit | TAP | PHPUnit | Doctest | Test:: Unit | |
CU | CUTE | NUnit | Fruit | JUnit | Qunit | Test:: More | lime | Autotest | Rspec | ||
Cutter | Google Test | MSTest | pFUNIT | TestNG | Mocha | Test:: Class | Tester | Unittest | minitest | ||
The languages under the “C#” column are .NET-supported languages. The cells highlighted in blue are not based on “xUnit.”
Historically, one such unit testing framework was so robust in terms of test structure and test functionality that it served as a basis for other unit testing frameworks. This was the SUnit unit test framework that was used to test software developed in the Smalltalk programming language. Any testing framework based on SUnit’s structure and functionality is called a xUnit Framework. A xUnit Framework is a unit test framework that derives its structure and functionality ...