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I write lots of unit tests. One thing I'm struggling with now is the organization of a large number of tests. It's hard to know what I have tests for without go

I write lots of unit tests. One thing I'm struggling with now is the organization of a large number of tests. It's hard to know what I have tests for without going into my tests directory and reading comments. Even then, I feel like I could do more to have a "big picture" overview of my testing strategy rather than seeing a bunch of one-off tests. I haven't quite figured out what that should look like. I think the IDE could do more in some cases. For example, when unit testing a method, I'd like to be able to tag a reference to the method I'm testing. Then, when I'm in my code, my IDE could show me the docstrings of tests I have for that method. It's the difference between "hello world" and software design principles used to build large scale systems. I see lots of "hello world" for testing, but not much of the other side. Does anyone have suggestions?

ereyes01 12y ago
The way I personally solve this problem is by organizing my code and my tests in a similar structure. Split application code up into reasonable files, and split the tests up the same way. Depending on your language/test framework, it also helps to put the test right next to the code... i.e. in Go, you can have component.go and component_test.go in the same directory. I do agree though that it would be nice to see an IDE have some smarts about tests...
ZeroGravitas 12y ago
Some IDEs will read unit test code coverage logs and be able to show you which lines are covered by tests, and which tests exactly cover each line.
PJDK 12y ago
Visual Studio + Resharper lets you do a "Find Usages" of a type or method which is very useful for finding relevant tests. Intellij has the same functionality and I imagine the other JetBrains IDEs are similar. More general advice is that your test structure should mirror your code structure. So a folder called Services should have a matching test folder called Services containing tests for the classes within it.

ereyes01 12y ago

The way I personally solve this problem is by organizing my code and my tests in a similar structure. Split application code up into reasonable files, and split the tests up the same way. Depending on your language/test framework, it also helps to put the test right next to the code... i.e. in Go, you can have component.go and component_test.go in the same directory. I do agree though that it would be nice to see an IDE have some smarts about tests...

ZeroGravitas 12y ago

Some IDEs will read unit test code coverage logs and be able to show you which lines are covered by tests, and which tests exactly cover each line.

PJDK 12y ago

Visual Studio + Resharper lets you do a "Find Usages" of a type or method which is very useful for finding relevant tests. Intellij has the same functionality and I imagine the other JetBrains IDEs are similar. More general advice is that your test structure should mirror your code structure. So a folder called Services should have a matching test folder called Services containing tests for the classes within it.