regress - Regression testing
Where did the idea come from?
Regress arose from my simple every day need of testing newly written programs and scripts with a bunch of different inputs against the expected outputs.
What do I mean you ask? Here’s an example:
Imagine you are developing a new wc that is faster than the
one installed by default on your operating system. Below is your
working directory:
$ ls
in1 out1 wc_own
While:
$ cat out1
1 73 503
$ cat in1
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean
commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque
enatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis,
sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla
vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut,
imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede
mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus.
Regress simplifies the process of running these tests in the future. Just put each one of your test inputs into a file starting with the input prefix and put its expected output into a file with the same name, where the input prefix is replaced by the output prefix.
In the given simple example this is how you would run 10s, or 100s of tests:
regress ./wc_own
Regress will collect all the input files, run them through the given command and compare the output against the expected ones, reporting the differences.
Regress was designed to be modular, so all the prefixes, the input and output files’ location can be defined by flags.
If this sounds like something you could use don’t hesitate to download it and give it a go. We could also use some help from the community, so if you are looking for a good first time open-source project, fork away! If you have some feature requests, or ideas open up a Issue and we will discuss it there.