I have found several conventions to housekeeping unit tests in a project and
I'm not sure which approach would be suitable for our next PHP project. I am
trying to find the best convention to encourage easy development and
accessibility of the tests when reviewing the source code. I would be very
interested in your experience/opinion regarding each:
One folder for productive code, another for unit tests: This separates
unit tests from the logic files of the project. This separation of
concerns is as much a nuisance as it is an advantage: Someone looking into
the source code of the project will - so I suppose - either browse the
implementation or the unit tests (or more commonly: the implementation
only). The advantage of unit tests being another viewpoint to your classes
is lost - those two viewpoints are just too far apart IMO.
Annotated test methods: Any modern unit testing framework I know allows
developers to create dedicated test methods, annotating them (@test) and
embedding them in the project code. The big drawback I see here is that
the project files get cluttered. Even if these methods are separated
using a comment header (like UNIT TESTS below this line) it just bloats
the class unnecessarily.
Test files within the same folders as the implementation files: Our file
naming convention dictates that PHP files containing classes (one class
per file) should end with .class.php. I could imagine that putting unit
tests regarding a class file into another one ending on .test.php would
render the tests much more present to other developers without tainting
the class. Although it bloats the project folders, instead of the
implementation files, this is my favorite so far, but I have my doubts: I
would think others have come up with this already, and discarded this
option for some reason (i.e. I have not seen a java project with the files
Foo.java and FooTest.java within the same folder.) Maybe it's because
java developers make heavier use of IDEs that allow them easier access to
the tests, whereas in PHP no big editors have emerged (like eclipse for
java) - many devs I know use vim/emacs or similar editors with little
support for PHP development per se.
What is your experience with any of these unit test placements? Do you have
another convention I haven't listed here? Or am I just overrating unit test
accessibility to reviewing developers?
