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<title>Design rationale</title>
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<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">
<a name="boost_test.intro.design_rationale"></a><a class="link" href="design_rationale.html" title="Design rationale">Design rationale</a>
</h3></div></div></div>
<p>
        Unit testing tasks arise during many different stages of software development:
        from initial project implementation to its maintenance and later revisions.
        These tasks differ in their complexity and purpose and accordingly are approached
        differently by different developers. The wide spectrum of tasks in a problem
        domain cause many requirements (sometimes conflicting) to be placed on a
        unit testing framework. These include:
      </p>
<div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; ">
<li class="listitem">
            Writing a <a class="link" href="../section_glossary.html#ref_test_module">unit test module</a> should
            be simple and obvious for new users.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            The framework should allow advanced users to perform non-trivial tests.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            Test module should be able to have many small test cases and developer
            should be able to group them into test suites.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            At the beginning of the development users want to see verbose and descriptive
            error messages.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            During the regression testing users just want to know if any tests failed.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            For small test modules, their execution time should prevail over compilation
            time: user don't want to wait a minute to compile a test that takes a
            second to run.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            For long and complex tests users want to be able to see the testing progress.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            Simplest tests shouldn't require an external library.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            For long term usage users of the <span class="emphasis"><em>Unit Test Framework</em></span>
            should be able to build it as a standalone library.
          </li>
</ul></div>
<p>
        The <span class="emphasis"><em>Unit Test Framework</em></span> satisfies the requirements above,
        and provides versatile facilities to:
      </p>
<div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; ">
<li class="listitem">
            Easily specify all the expectations in the code being tested.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            Organize these expectations into <a class="link" href="../section_glossary.html#test_case">test cases</a>
            and <a class="link" href="../section_glossary.html#test_suite">test suites</a>.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            Detect different kinds of errors, failures, time-outs and report them
            in a uniform customizable way.
          </li>
</ul></div>
<h5>
<a name="boost_test.intro.design_rationale.h0"></a>
        <span class="phrase"><a name="boost_test.intro.design_rationale.why_framework"></a></span><a class="link" href="design_rationale.html#boost_test.intro.design_rationale.why_framework">Why
        do you need a framework?</a>
      </h5>
<p>
        While you can write a testing program yourself from scratch, the framework
        offers the following benefits:
      </p>
<div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; ">
<li class="listitem">
            You get an error report in a text format. Error reports are uniform and
            you can easily machine-analyze them.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            Error reporting is separated from the testing code. You can easily change
            the error report format without affecting the testing code.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            The framework automatically detects exceptions thrown by the tested components
            and time-outs, and reports them along other errors.
          </li>
<li class="listitem">
            You can easily filter the test cases, and call only the desired ones.
            This does not require changing the testing code.
          </li>
</ul></div>
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