Thursday, April 17, 2008

Is OSGi the enemy of JUnit tests?

I wrote a set of JUnit(3.8.1) tests for the terminal. Originally those were normal unit-tests. To be able to test non public methods and non public classes, I put the tests into the same package but into a separate test plugin. I also added the test plugin as friend plugin of the packages I want to test. This works fine if I run the tests as normal JUnit tests. But if I run the same tests as JUnit Plug-in Tests I get java.lang.IllegalAccessError. The reason is simple: each OSGi bundle runs it's own class loader and therefore the classes appear not to be in the same package.

There are different solutions:

  • Make all methods and classes you want to test public (really bad idea)
  • Put the unit tests into the same plugin as your code and make the dependency to JUnit optional (not a good separation of concerns).
  • Only test public classes and methods (I think this is to restrictive and often to coarse grain)
  • Make your test plugin a fragment. One problem is that other plugins cannot access classes defined in fragments (as Patrick Paulin points out in a more detailed discussion about fragments in unit tests). Another problem is that plugin.xml in a fragment is ignored. And therefore you test plugin cannot contribute


I tried out turning a plugin into a fragment. It is as simple as adding adding a line following line to your MANIFEST.MF
Fragment-Host: org.eclipse.the.plugin.you.want.to.test
and removing the plugin you want to test from the required plugins. As long as your test plugin is not part of a bigger test case and it does not need to contribute extensions Patrick Paulin describes a solution for that using reflection, fragments are a good solution.

A good way to avoid having to use extensions (plugin.xml) in your test plugin is to use dependency injection for your classes.

But I think there should be a better way to write a test plugin that can access non public classes and members. I understand why the security concept of OSGi introduces those problems, but I am still looking for a solution for my JUnit tests.

Any ideas?

16 comments:

  1. Try fragment.xml instead of plugin.xml if you need to contribute extensions.

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  2. ya, fragments generally are the best solution for tests.

    Another solution is to x-friends the test plug-in

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  3. Fragments are the way forward; the only thing is, you need to add a dependency on org.junit in your bundle. I get around this with an optional dependency.

    In terms of plugin.xml - you can contribute things (e.g. mock) into the extension registry directly; you don't need to rely on plugin.xml as a way of getting items in there.

    I had a mechanism which ran through tests, and depending on whether it needed the OSGi environment up and running or not:

    http://alblue.blogspot.com/2006/03/javaeclipse-running-all-tests-in.html

    Alex

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  4. Actually, "lazy developers are the enemy of JUnit tests"

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  5. If you declare the tests to be a friend, and make the private packages visible to the test plugin, you should be able to run as a Plugin JUnit.

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  6. Fragments can contribute extensions if they have fragment.xml and not plugin.xml.

    This might have some quirks, but it works.

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  7. Rename your plugin.xml to fragment.xml, then you can define extensions there.

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  8. > Make all methods and classes you
    > want to test public (really bad
    > idea)

    Is it? Public not necessarily the same as API.

    The strategy used by many in the Eclipse project is to make *internal* (i.e. non-API) classes and members public if they need to be invoked by tests, and then declare the test plug-in as a friend (true, an Eclipse-ism).

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  9. >Another problem is that >plugin.xml in a fragment is >ignored. And therefore you test >plugin cannot contribute

    AFAIK the equivalent of plugin.xml in a fragment is fragment.xml

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  10. One could argue that this is a PDE issue rather than an OSGi one. But I agree with all the other commenters: use a fragment.

    Alex, you don't need to add the dependency on JUnit to the original bundle, optionally or otherwise. Just add it to the test fragment. Both Require-Bundle and Import-Package are valid headers in a fragment, and anything you put there is appended to the Requires/Imports of the host bundle.

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  11. Hi,
    Probably kind of late for this discussion but my advise would be to use Maven. In this way your tests are in the same bundle but kept under java/test folder. Tests may contain other dependencies than main classes and are not provided in the output artefact.

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  12. I looked for some time to find the solution to test OSGi bundles. I wrote the result here:
    http://knol.google.com/k/ed-pichler/osgi-automated-unit-and-integration/294uonxs6koor/14#view

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  13. You can mock the BundleContext and services as well.

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  14. I never really understand use of OSGi though I heard a lot about it that it can provide sort of dynamic control to you just like JMX you can invoke any method from any class at runtime etc , does any one here OSGi in there project , how do you find this, is it worth to learn ?

    Javin
    How HashMap works in Java

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  15. I wonder if anyone has tried Luminus that created some code to expose what is inside the container to another equal bundle that is the testing bundle - http://lsd.luminis.eu/fitnesse-and-osgi/

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  16. I agree SAT is better than wonderlic and both are standard platform to get good scores with huge effort SAT/ACT are the best college level tests. Which method is good for getting good grade in these tests with briefly thanks.

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