Choosing a testing library for AbSolute

[ptal]

AbSolute does not seem to have a test library/framework yet, and I would need one to make simple tests on the octagon abstract domain I'm developing. Since I won't (shouldn't ? ;-)) be the only one to use it, I prefer to ask what is your preference. After a quick look on the ones available in OPAM, my preference goes to ppx_inline_test for the following reasons:

• Very easy to write tests (maybe the most important reason, otherwise we don't write them...).
• Use OCaml syntax.
• Tests can be written inside the source file, which has various advantages such as:
  • Serving as valuable documentation.
  • Easy access to private information of modules (for example to check invariants of internal data structures).
• Developed and used by Jane Street. It is one of the most downloaded test framework and seem to be regularly updated.

What do you think?

[MarechalAlex]

There is a "make check" command to run some non-regression tests. If think they are handmade, meaning that they don't use any existing testing framework.

What kind of tests do you plan to make? Unit tests of functions?

[ptal]

Yes, unit tests. Black box tests are good and necessary too, but not for details / invariants of algorithms / ...

[ptal]

I use alcotest on my fork, which is not invasive, without ppx macro, and seems to work great so far!

[ghilesZ]

I agree alcotest looks great.

[ptal]

Especially the name.

[mpelleau]

Do you want to deploy it?

[ptal]

I forgot to push the changes on my fork but I already set up everything here (the build file, and the test/ repository), so we just need to pull-request this part (although I don't know how to pull request only that part and not the rest...).