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Welcome to the 2012/01 issue of a monthly newsletter devoted to developers testing tools and trends in the JVM world.

Let us see what important things happened in December 2011.

Mutational Testing

PIT Mutation Testing

• At last some movement in the (seemingly) abandoned world of mutation testing tools! New release of PIT Mutation Testing http://pitest.org/posts/2011/12/05/release_0.24/ The tool is now actively developed by Henry Coles. Stay tuned, new features are being added on daily basis
• List of existing Java mutation testing tools by Henry Coles http://pitest.org/java_mutation_testing_systems/

Articles, Blogs, Discussions

• A popular series of blog posts - How Google Tests Software - now available as book http://www.amazon.com/Google-Tests-Software-James-Whittaker/dp/032180302...
• A sarcastic view on TDD - when NOT to use it? http://www.softwareandi.com/2011/12/10-reasons-to-avoid-test-driven.html
• Good tips on writing high quality tests Tim Ottinger & Jeff Langr http://agileinaflash.blogspot.com/2011/11/test-abstraction-smells.html
• Using reflection to populate test objects? Not the optimal way (IMHO) but maybe sometimes... http://richardashworth.blogspot.com/2011/12/using-reflection-to-create-m...
• Another voice in the long and heated debate on devs/testers role in tests creation: http://test-driven-development.com/2011/12/02/devs-write-tests-not-testers/
• Once again about test method names. ...deja vu anyone? Even if so, it is still worth your glance http://java.dzone.com/articles/quiz-what%E2%80%99s-best-test-method
• funny and educational games with google converters on Peter Houghton blog http://www.investigatingsoftware.co.uk/2011/12/testing-testing-1-2-3.html

Testing Frameworks

JUnit & friends

• new relese of junitparams 0.37 with new feature: a test method can now get parameters from more than one method http://code.google.com/p/junitparams/

TestNG

• New HTML reports for TestNG. Much better (nicer and more functional) than the previous version. Take a sneak-peak at http://testng.org/new/ and read Cedric's blog post http://beust.com/weblog/2012/01/01/ushering-testng-into-the-new-year/
• TestNG better supported by Pax Exam 2.3.0 http://team.ops4j.org/wiki/display/paxexam/TestNG+Driver
• Good explanation on various types of test dependencies offered by TestNG (groups, priorities, testng.xml) http://groups.google.com/group/testng-users/browse_thread/thread/ff1721d...

Mocking Frameworks

Mockito

• Mockito 1.9.0 released http://code.google.com/p/mockito/wiki/ReleaseNotes Also nice new javadocs http://docs.mockito.googlecode.com/hg/latest/org/mockito/Mockito.html
• First information on Mockito book http://groups.google.com/group/mockito/browse_thread/thread/d16f109b1ed3...

JMockit

• JMockit 0.999.12 released http://jmockit.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/www/changes.html Few small, but quite useful changes including internal upgrades of libraries (e.g. Mockito 1.9.0) and better error messages (including parameters)

Integration / Functional Testing

JEEUnit

• jeeunit 0.9.0 released http://code.google.com/p/jeeunit/wiki/News Support for JBoss AS 7, embedded Tomcat 6 & 7, and Spring DI

Unitils

• unitils 3.3 released https://unitils.atlassian.net/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10000&ve... New module io-unitils. This module adds support for creating temporary files or directories and for the loading of a file contents into a field. Also take a look at the new site layout.

Arquillian

• Testing Java EE 6 Persistence With Arquillan http://www.softwarepassion.com/java-ee-6-testing-with-arquillian-persist...

Pax Exam

• Pax Exam 2.3.0 brings "more than 30 new features, maintenance updates and bugfixes." http://team.ops4j.org/wiki/display/paxexam/Pax+Exam

Cargo

• cargo 1.1.4 http://old.nabble.com/CARGO-1.1.4-now-available%21-td32910331.html maven plugin also updated

Selenium, Thucidydes

• A good introduction to Thucidydes project by John Ferguson Smart http://drdobbs.com/testing/232300277
• First announcement of Selenium Conf 2012 http://seleniumhq.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/announcing-selenium-conf-12/?
• New release of Selenium IDE 1.5.0 http://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/SeIDEReleaseNotes
• Selenium 2 mini-DSL written with Scala by http://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/liftweb/djnupL7bG_0/discussion

Code Coverage

jacoco

• Some progress in Jacoco code coverage tool - new release 0.5.6 http://www.eclemma.org/jacoco/trunk/doc/changes.html

If you happen to author a testing-related tool or wrote interesting article, and would like to be mentioned in the newsletter, please contact me by mail.

Other Tools & Utilities

maven-surefire-plugin

• maven-surefire-plugin 2.11 released - a lot of bug fixes and JUnit @Category support added - read http://maven.40175.n5.nabble.com/ANN-Maven-Surefire-Plugin-2-11-Released... for detailed release information

See you next month!

Thank you, this is the end of Testing Newsletter 2012 / 01 issue.