[Tutor] Unit testing

[Tino Dai]

On 6/27/06, Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at freenet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Ok, that leads me to my next question.  Currently, I have a class
> > that I
> > want to unit test, but it contains a semaphore from another class.
> > Now, I
> > could make the semaphore a global variable, or I bring in the other
> > class.
> > One violates "good" programming principles and the other violates
> > the unit
> > testing principles. Is there another way?
>
> Reconsider your definition of a "Unit" maybe?
> A Unit should stand alone, it is the smallest amount of code that can
> stand alone.
>
> If your class relies on another class maybe both classes need to be
> considered as a single unit? Or maybe the classes need to be
> refactored to
> make them less closely coupled?


See that what makes this particular coding endevour so exciting. Instead of
learning the mechanics of coding, I am starting to gain an understanding of
style! I see that only two of my classes are "strongly" link because of a
SocketServer call that I make. Other than that I can test all of the other
classes independently. And there is one caveat, I will have to make a bunch
of semaphores global instead of local to the classes. While I know that
there is no hard and fast rule about using global variables, where can I
find or can somebody tell me where I can find some guidelines about them (or
is this a use common sense rule)?

-Thanks,
Tino
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