Support for @Before and @After in AnnotationSpec

[dave08]

This could be very useful for those migrating from JUnit without tests that are too complicated.

[LeoColman]

Makes sense.
However, should @Before be executed before Test or before Spec?

[dave08]

I think it should conform to JUnit, the point is to make for easy migration and compatibility.

[LeoColman]

I'm not sure how JUnit works in this sense. I believe there's a @BeforeClass and a @before. The first would run before Spec while the later would be run after Test, I suppose

[dave08]

https://www.baeldung.com/junit-before-beforeclass-beforeeach-beforeall, I think they sum things up pretty well. It might be nice to have all those annotations for those with Junit4/5. Anyways it seems like they are the same, just a better indication of what they do: https://stackoverflow.com/a/20295618/8927855

[LeoColman]

I think we should jump straight to @BeforeEach and @BeforeAll, that are from JUnit5, and ignore JUnit4. What do you think? Should we support both?

[dave08]

I think both, since those with JUnit4 tests can just derive from AnnotationSpec, and don't have to change anything else... maybe those old annotations can be marked as deprecated if you want people to follow one convention on new tests...

[LeoColman]

People would have to change imports anyway.

Marking as deprecated is introducing an old testing model (JUnit4) into a new testing framework (KT).

If we're going to help people, I believe only JUnit5 should be supported. IF we keep giving support to somewhat legacy or old code, codebases will never change

[LeoColman]

They're ambiguous in JUnit4, and they'll be ambiguous in Kotlintest if we do that.

Do you think it's very necessary?

[dave08]

For those with lots of tests... even junit took the time to make Junit Vintage so that they don't just drop all those users that don't have the time to upgrade... importing new annotations is just an alt-enter here and there...

By the way, do you really need your own Test (etc...) annotation? Maybe you could use JUnit's wouldn't that make things a bit simpler (and less confusing, imagine a user accidentally imports the JUnit version, how would they now why their tests are not being discovered?). Unless it would mean an extra dependency...

[LeoColman]

Maybe we could start accepting both Junit's @test and our @test, in case of accidents.

We don't want the necessity of users to add the JUnit dependencies to use KotlinTest, and we should provide our own annotations.

And maybe you're correct, we should create a TypeAlias for both @before and @after, but deprecate them.

[dave08]

Is there currently any way to add such a before to an AnnotationSpec in the spec itself without declaring a whole listener? I just need to reset mocks before each test and I need the references to those objects...

[LeoColman]

There is.

class Foo : AnnotationSpec() {

@Test
fun foo() {
"BAR" shouldBe "BAR
}

override fun beforeTest(description: Description) {
    // clear mocks
  }

override fun afterTest(description: Description, result: TestResult) {
 // Do after
}
}

You can also abuse the test isolation with isInstancePerTest() = true, so that your class is instantiated everytime

[dave08]

Also @Ignore could be very useful. How could I do that currently (I'm in the middle of converting tests...)?

[LeoColman]

You're correct on that one too.
I'll see what can be done