Test Case Exception Throwing style (Re: Cactus tests)

[Joe Germuska <jo...@germuska.com>]

Going further along the quest to get Tomcat tests running in Maven, I 
need to ask a style question:

Most or all of the taglib testcases use a pattern where they call a 
private method "runMyTest" with some parameters.  This method calls 
pageContext.forward() to pass control to a JSP where the tags are 
actually tested.

A problem I had while trying to get the Cactus tests to run is that 
this "runMyTest" method caught an exception from pageContext.forward()  
and called the "fail" method.  This resulted in the real stack trace 
getting printed to STDOUT (amidst output from 100 test cases) and a not 
particularly useful message getting placed in the test report.

I would suggest that the proper behavior here is to throw the exception 
and let JUnit deal with it as an error rather than a failure.  This 
puts the actual error in the test report, which makes it a lot easier 
to solve the problem.

I've actually implemented this change locally in the test classes to 
help me debug the cactus tests.  Would anyone object to making these 
changes permanent?

For what it's worth, I've got it passing 71/97 tests clear, and the 
rest fall into two categories: 19 with failures because the 
context-path of the test app is hardcoded as "test" and the plugin uses 
"struts-cactus", and 7 that have to do with cookie values.  If anyone 
has any clever ideas for the simplest way to extract the context path 
without using the tags which are being tested, I'm all ears...    the 
cookie thing is totally baffling at the moment.

Joe


--
Joe Germuska
Joe@Germuska.com
http://blog.germuska.com
  "We want beef in dessert if we can get it there."
   -- Betty Hogan, Director of New Product Development, National 
Cattlemen's Beef Association