Hi, I wonder what kind of interest there is on Test Driven Development (TDD) in R. Test Driven Development consists of writing the test before the function, and iteratively build the function until it passes the test. Python and Ruby (specially Ruby) have very strong test-oriented cultures. In fact, in Ruby at least the custom is to do TDD and lately Behavior-driven development (BDD). In BDD, one writes a story of what one would want the code to do. This story is almost native English, and then the test suite converts it into something that the language understand as tests. There are some posts on the list about this, but they are about testing in general (Runit), not TDD. Example: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.general/85047 Recently, I found there is an alpha, but working implementation of TDD for Komodo edit: www.sciviews.org/SciViews-K/index.html The editor has a green bar that becomes red as soon as one edits a function, and that edit breaks the tests. This is tremendously useful. Using Gmane search, the only mention I could find on svUnit was: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.general/136632/focus=136662 I think this could make a great UseR 2009 talk. Ideally, by someone with more R experience than me, and even more ideally by Philippe Grosjean :), but it push comes to shove, I could prepare such a talk. Would this be interesting at all? Are there any resources that I have missed? How many people are using this kind of testing or Komodo -sciViews at all? Best, -Jose -- Jose Quesada, PhD. Max Planck Institute, Human Development, Berlin http://www.josequesada.name/
Jose Quesada wrote:> Hi, > I wonder what kind of interest there is on Test Driven Development (TDD) > in R. > > Test Driven Development consists of writing the test before the > function, and iteratively build the function until it passes the test. > > Python and Ruby (specially Ruby) have very strong test-oriented > cultures. In fact, in Ruby at least the custom is to do TDD and lately > Behavior-driven development (BDD). In BDD, one writes a story of what > one would want the code to do. This story is almost native English, and > then the test suite converts it into something that the language > understand as tests. > > There are some posts on the list about this, but they are about testing > in general (Runit), not TDD. Example: > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.general/85047 > > Recently, I found there is an alpha, but working implementation of TDD > for Komodo edit: > www.sciviews.org/SciViews-K/index.html > > The editor has a green bar that becomes red as soon as one edits a > function, and that edit breaks the tests. This is tremendously useful. > > Using Gmane search, the only mention I could find on svUnit was: > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.general/136632/focus=136662 > > I think this could make a great UseR 2009 talk. Ideally, by someone with > more R experience than me, and even more ideally by Philippe Grosjean > :), but it push comes to shove, I could prepare such a talk. > > Would this be interesting at all? Are there any resources that I have > missed?There is the RUnit package which is a mature xUnit implementation for R. I don't know of a tight integration into an editor (apart from that it is _planned_ for StatET, the Eclipse R plug-in), but as such it is very useful already. http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RUnit/index.html HTH, Tobias