OCUnit

June 6, 2005: Apple is now distributing OCUnit as an integral part of XCode 2.1

Test first, develop later!

OCUnit is a testing framework for Objective C in the Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, GNUSTEP, YellowBox/Cocoa and WebObjects/Objective C environments.

With OCUnit, testing becomes integrated with development. You can test frameworks, bundles, or applications. You can now tell "when something starts working or when something stops working [...] you can cheaply and incrementally build a test suite that will help you measure your progress, spot unintended side effects, and focus your development efforts." --Kent Beck, Erich Gamma [2].

This Objective C testing framework is a based on SUnit, Kent Beck's Smalltalk unit testing framework [1], also available for Java under the name JUnit[2], and is distributed as open source.

Information on this page includes:

• Features and benefits
• License
• Feedback
• Download
• Mock objects
• References

Fig. 1: Building with tests.

Features

Features of OCUnit include:

• SenTestingKit, a framework to help you write test cases;
• otest, a testing tool;
• a collection of Makefiles and utilities to seamlessly integrate testing with Xcode and ProjectBuilder (Fig 1.)

Some benefits of OCUnit are:

• Object-oriented tests.
• Very low overhead.
• Tests are in the same language as the implementation.
• Test case classes cohabit with classes they test.
• Promotes aggressive refactoring.
• Helps capture requirements, expose dependencies.
• Total integration in the development process.
• Records testing expertise.
• Tests frameworks, bundles, or applications.
• Easy installation
• No license fee.

License

Sen:te makes this software available for anyone to use, under the terms of this Open Source License.

Feedback

Your feedback is very important. It would be appreciated if you would send any changes you make in OCUnit source code to us so that others may benefit from your changes.

For any question, suggestion, or problem report, please send an e-mail to feedback@sente.ch.

Release Notes

New in Release v41 (April 11, 2005)

• Make sure Foundation is loaded before SenTestingKit.
• Added autorelease pool to detect over-releases faster.
• Added license to all source files.

Download

The source code for OCUnit can be downloaded from our server.

OCUnit is now distributed by Apple as a part of XCode 2.1. If you are using XCode 2.1, you do not need to download and install OCUnit.

Sources + Script, v41 for installing in your home directory. Use this package for more flexibility. (for Mac OS X 10.3, Xcode)		OCUnitHome-v41.dmg
Sources + Script, v41 for installing in your home directory. Use this package for more flexibility. (for Mac OS X 10.3, Xcode)		OCUnitHome-v41.tgz
Installer Package + Sources, v41 for installing at the root level. Use this package for a quick start, but with components installed at fixed location. (for Mac OS X 10.3, Xcode)		OCUnitRoot-v41.dmg
Source code, v33 (for Mac OS X 10.3, Xcode)		OCUnit_v33.zip
Installer + Sources, v27 (for Mac OS X and ProjectBuilder, GNUSTEP, Rhapsody, OPENSTEP, Yellow Box...)		OCUnit_v27.dmg
Sources, v27 (for Mac OS X and ProjectBuilder, GNUSTEP, Rhapsody, OPENSTEP, Yellow Box...)		OCUnitSourceDistribution_v27.tar.gz

Mock objects

Unit testing is sometimes used with "Mock Objects". We recommend Mulle Kybernetik's implementation of mock objects for Objective C, OCMock.

References and further reading

• [1] Kent Beck, Simple Smalltalk Testing:With Patterns.
• [2] Kent Beck, Erich Gamma, Test Infected: Programmers Love Writing Tests.
• [3] Object-Oriented Testing links on CETUS
• [4] Marco Scheurer, Unit Testing for Objective-C using ProjectBuilder and OCUnit
• [5] Jim Menard, Unit Testing with OCUnit on O'Reilly Mac DevCenter.
• [6] Apple's developer website, Test Driving Your Code with OCUnit
• [7] Apple's developer website, Adding Unit Tests to Your Projects
• [8] Apple's developer website, Unit Test Guidelines
• [9] For Wil Shipley Unit testing is teh suck, Urr., and bbum's answer

Software Library

More Mac OS X, WebObjects or OPENSTEP software to download from Sen:te

Sen:te