Agile development and testing in Python

Summary

We will present a Python application that we developed together as an "agile team", using agile development and testing approaches, techniques and tools. The value of the tutorial will consist on one hand in detailing the development and testing methodologies we used, and on the other hand in demonstrating specific Python tools that we used for our development and testing. We will cover TDD, unit testing, code coverage, functional/acceptance testing, Web application testing, continuous integration, source code management, issue tracking, project management, documentation, Python package management.

Outline

1st hour:

• Intro: agile development and testing concepts

• Source control management ([http://subversion.tigris.org/ subversion]) and issue tracking/project management ([http://www.edgewall.com/trac/ Trac])

• TDD/unit testing ([http://codespeak.net/py/current/doc/test.html py.test], [http://docs.python.org/lib/module-doctest.html doctest], [http://somethingaboutorange.com/mrl/projects/nose/ nose], [http://testoob.sourceforge.net/ TestOOB])

• unit tests as documentation ([http://agiletesting.blogspot.com/2005/02/agile-documentation-with-doctest-and.html doctest and epydoc])

2nd hour:

• code coverage (the [http://www.nedbatchelder.com/code/modules/coverage.html coverage] module)

• source code analysis ([http://www.logilab.org/projects/pylint pylint], [http://divmod.org/projects/pyflakes pyflakes])

• acceptance/functional testing ([http://agiletesting.blogspot.com/2004/11/writing-fitnesse-tests-in-python.html PyFit/FitNesse], [http://texttest.org/ TextTest])

• performance testing ([http://funkload.nuxeo.org/ FunkLoad], [http://www.idyll.org/%7Et/www-tools/twill.html twill])

3rd hour:

• Web application testing with [http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/SEL/Home Selenium] and twill

• Scripting Selenium tests using a [http://agiletesting.blogspot.com/2005/03/web-app-testing-with-python-part-2.html Twisted-based server]

• Python package management ([http://docs.python.org/lib/module-distutils.html distutils], [http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/setuptools setuptools], [http://tracos.org/cheesecake Cheesecake index])

• Continuous integration and 'smoke test' ([http://buildbot.sourceforge.net/ buildbot])

Audience

Python developers and testers interested in agile methodologies

Presenter contact info

• [http://agiletesting.blogspot.com Grig Gheorghiu] <grig at gheorghiu dot net>

• [http://www.advogato.org/person/titus/ Titus Brown] <titus at caltech dot edu>