JUnit 4.0 in NetBeans
Introduction
JUnit 4.0 is a major improvement over existing JUnit 3.8.x.
The main differences are:
- based on Java 5 annotations
– test classes and test methods are primarily recognized
by Java annotations; annotations are used also for extended
declarations of test methods (e.g. to declare that a test
method is expected to throw a certain exception)
- JDK 1.5+ is required (due to usage of annotations)
- support for timeout for test methods
- it is possible to declare suite-wide initialization method
- the new JUnit API is packaged into
org.junit.**
packages
For more details, see article
An early look at JUnit 4.
JUnit is hosted on SourceForge.net.
JUnit 4.0 can be downloaded from the
JUnit 4.0 download page.
JUnit 4.0 in NetBeans 6.0
Support for JUnit 4 is implemented in NetBeans 6.0, while support
for JUnit 3.8 has been maintained. NetBeans 6.0 is bundled with
JUnit 3.8.2 and JUnit 4.1. The most used types of projects have
both these libraries on their test classpaths so there is no need
to add them manually.
The first time the Create JUnit Tests action is invoked
on a project, the user is asked about the preferred type of JUnit
tests for the project. The appropriate test skeletons are then
generated for classes in the project.
Once the user answers the questions about the preferred type of
JUnit tests, only one version of JUnit library (the one
corresponding to the user's choice) is kept in the project and the
other one is removed. If the project does not contain any JUnit
library on the test classpath at the moment the action is first
invoked, the JUnit library corresponding to the user's choice is
added to the test classpath. In either case, just one JUnit
library is present in the project once the user created their
first test class using the action.
The next time the Create JUnit Tests action is
invoked, the preferred type of JUnit library is determined
from the version of a JUnit library currently present in the
test classpath of the project. If it is JUnit 4.1, test
skeletons for JUnit 4 will be generated. If it is JUnit 3.8.2,
test skeletons for JUnit 3.8 will be generated.
This mechanism implies that if the user manually replaces one
JUnit library with the other one in the project's test
classpath, they can thus change the preferred type of JUnit
test skeletons.
NetBeans 6.0 bundles Ant 1.7.0 which has been accomodated for use
with JUnit 4. When JUnit test classes are executed, Ant recognizes
whether they are JUnit-3-style or JUnit-4-style tests and
correctly handles both of them. One project can even contain
a mix of JUnit-3-style and JUnit-4-style test classes and
everything should keep working. The JUnit module uses output
generated by Ant for displaying test results which means that
JUnit test results are displayed correctly both for JUnit-3-style
and JUnit-4-style tests.
JUnit 4 tests in NetBeans 5.x
There is no support for generating JUnit-4-style test skeletons in
NetBeans 5.x.
Although nothing special has been done for support of running
JUnit 4 tests in NetBeans 5.x, it is possible to run them
pretty easily – see the report on
How to adapt NetBeans 5.x for running
JUnit 4 tests.
