Eclipse: mocking up the platform for testing

Question

Hi!

I am developing an Eclipse plugin and have tests for it. Some are regular JUnit tests, some are PDE tests (i.e. require starting an eclipse instance to be able to access eclipse internals).

I wonder if it would be a good idea to try to turn some of the PDE test into regular tests, by creating mock objects for the platform. It would be a lot of work, but I think it would save time because the tests will run faster and we will also be able to use Infinitest for more tests.

I would appreciate any feedback, so that I can make up my mind about how to proceed.

Thanks in advance!

best regards, Vlad

Answer 1

It will be a lot of work since you can't reuse much of the original code (which is riddled with lots of private final static for runtime data which you can't get rid of nor can you access it).

I suggest to give it a try. If it seems feasible at all, you can implement what you need for your plugin and then hand the result over to the Eclipse community to extend.