FReT: Framework for Regression Testing
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FReT is a software package intended for helping with the development and
execution of test suites for Common Lisp software. The longer term goal is
to implement mechanisms for:

1. Defining test suites and test cases. The API for this has been inspired
   by LIFT, though the names and syntax have been changed a little. If you
   are porting tests from LIFT, a syntactic transformation is all you will
   need. TODO: Site Gary Warren King's LIFT.

2. Writing and reading test cases. Any test case or test suite authored in
   FReT should be easy to read and write from some storage. The most likely
   storage location is going to be the file system, but it is easy to build
   an abstraction that will support more. So we should have it. The storage
   policy should be easy to hook into a system definition facility.

3. Managing test cases. At the very minimum, FReT should have a console UI
   capable of operating on existing test suites and test cases. The list of
   operations should include add, delete, rearrange, modify, inspect, etc.

4. Running tests. FReT should be able to run test cases both as part of the
   development process, and off-line. The execution of test cases should
   tie in nicely with a system definition facility.

5. Historical analysis. FReT should support the analysis of test runs over
   time, giving the programmer some insight into the development process
   itself.

Ultimately, FReT should be able to provide a software testing environment
that is robust, complete, easy to use, and extensible. There will have to
be tradeoffs made along the way, but with the Lisp language as a starting
point this end goal should be quite feasible.



Present Status

At present, we have implemented the test suite and test case definitions,
and the basic operations for reading and writing test cases to file. The
goal is to bring FReT into a real working environment ASAP. I believe the
most critical features for this are:

1. The definition of test suites and test cases.

2. The on-line execution of test suites and test cases.

3. The reading and writing of test suites.

4. The ability to tie in the reading and writing of test suites with system
   definition facilities.

All four of these are now implemented. The next step is to use FReT in a
real project, with the goal of fixing bugs and ensuring the system is
usable as intended. This will lead to a 1.0 release.



Where on the WWW is FReT?

http://www.sfmishras.com/smishra/fret/



More Information

Please see the docs/ subdirectory for additional documentation.

$Id$

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