Sun, 25 Jan 2004

Software MFA Week 1 Status Report

As a first step in my project, Brian asked me to find examples of software that are related to my work and suggest them for annotation. I went through the software listed at http://testingfaqs.org/ and found the following:

• Dmalloc - Debug Malloc Library - http://dmalloc.com/. "memory-leak tracking, fence-post write detection, file/line number reporting, and general logging of statistics."
• TET - the Open Group The Test Environment Toolkit - http://tetworks.opengroup.org/Products/tet.htm. "takes care of the administration, reporting, and sequencing of the tests providing a single common user interface for all of the tests that you develop"
• MockMaker - http://www.mockmaker.org/ - "MockMaker is a program for creating source code for mock object classes."
• MockObjects - http://www.mockobjects.com/wiki/ - a generic unit testing framework using mock objects that supports a test-first development process

Brian says one of these projects was a failed work, but that it would be useful to discuss why it failed in the annotation. he didn't say which one though -- it's my task to determine that.

Also, I spent some time looking for a candidate for software to instrument using the concepts I will be exploring in my work. For what I have in mind, a good candidate would be some kind of server-side process that is intended to run continuously for long periods and be typically deployed on a system that is difficult or impossible to place under the control of the usual desktop development tools like IDEs, debuggers, etc. Since I'm using ruby for this project, I think MiniRubyWiki will fit the bill. It runs stand-alone (no web server required), is small, and already includes a page called the WikiNerveCenterWikiNerveCenter. If you have any other suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. Another potential, if the wiki doesn't work out, is Cerise, "a Ruby web/application server following the same general pattern as J2EE application servers". Finally, if Dave Thomas agrees, I could instrument the code for the website management package he wrote.

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