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Is editing verified in the next step?

I just read a great book by Michael C. Feathers Effectively working with Legacy Code , a bible for introducing tests into legacy code. In this book, he describes something called Testing with Edit-triggered :

If this book isn’t released by the time this book is released, I suspect that someone will soon be developing an IDE that allows you to specify a set of tests that will be executed each time you press a key. This would be an incredible way to close the feedback loop.

It has to happen. It just seems inevitable. There are already IDEs that check the syntax for every keystroke and change the color of the code when erros is present. Testing with editing is the next step.

When I read this, I did not hear about any IDEs or tools that support this. However, I just found a project called Infinitest that supports this for Java.

My questions:

  • Are there any other tools / frameworks that support this (hopefully also for Visual Studio)?
  • What are your impressions of this type of testing (effective, slow IDE, etc.)?
  • Is this the next TDD step?

Update:

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There autotest for ruby. It constantly runs unit tests when editing files, using some simple conventions to map source files for file testing. There is also a plugin that I saw that the color code of the code is red or green in emacs interactively. I think this idea of ​​immediate visual feedback on passing / failing in the code editor itself is great.

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Several years have passed since the initial question, and there are several tools available for .NET (I assume this space has grown for other languages ​​as well).

There is a version of .NET Autotest ( mentioned earlier in this thread ) called AutoTest.NET that has been forked and updated into a more fully functional tool called ContinuousTests . I tried it about a year ago, and at that moment it had great potential, but, unfortunately, it looks like they decided to stop developing. However, the top level is now free !

I did not use NCrunch , but it is a commercial product that seems to be actively developed.

There are script tools based on> that can also match the bill for what you ask

See also this question: How to do continuous testing in .NET?

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Well, is this, in fact, test development, in which tests run continuously, as you type? Therefore, I would not say that “editing testing” is a new development technology, but simply a function of your development environment.

Regarding the speed of this function, I suppose it depends on how complex your project is, what compiler and language you use, and what changes you make. If you modify some basic library that is used throughout the project, your compiler will have to recompile most of your program to be able to run tests in other libraries using your code.

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