Summary of Changes in version 4.5

Categories

Each test method and test class can be annotated as belonging to a category:

public static class SomeUITests {
    @Category(UserAvailable.class)
    @Test
    public void askUserToPressAKey() { }

    @Test
    public void simulatePressingKey() { }
}

@Category(InternetConnected.class)
public static class InternetTests {
    @Test
    public void pingServer() { }
}

To run all of the tests in a particular category, you must currently explicitly create a custom request:

new JUnitCore().run(Request.aClass(SomeUITests.class).inCategories(UserAvailable.class));

This feature will very likely be improved before the final release of JUnit 4.5

Miscellaneous

Summary of Changes in version 4.4

JUnit is designed to efficiently capture developers' intentions about their code, and quickly check their code matches those intentions. Over the last year, we've been talking about what things developers would like to say about their code that have been difficult in the past, and how we can make them easier.

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assertThat

Two years ago, Joe Walnes built a new assertion mechanism on top of what was then JMock 1. The method name was assertThat, and the syntax looked like this:

assertThat(x, is(3));
assertThat(x, is(not(4)));
assertThat(responseString, either(containsString("color")).or(containsString("colour")));
assertThat(myList, hasItem("3"));

More generally:

assertThat([value], [matcher statement]);

Advantages of this assertion syntax include:

We have decided to include this API directly in JUnit. It's an extensible and readable syntax, and it enables new features, like assumptions and theories.

Some notes:

Assumptions

Ideally, the developer writing a test has control of all of the forces that might cause a test to fail. If this isn't immediately possible, making dependencies explicit can often improve a design.
For example, if a test fails when run in a different locale than the developer intended, it can be fixed by explicitly passing a locale to the domain code.

However, sometimes this is not desirable or possible.
It's good to be able to run a test against the code as it is currently written, implicit assumptions and all, or to write a test that exposes a known bug. For these situations, JUnit now includes the ability to express "assumptions":

import static org.junit.Assume.*

@Test public void filenameIncludesUsername() {
   assumeThat(File.separatorChar, is('/'));
   assertThat(new User("optimus").configFileName(), is("configfiles/optimus.cfg"));
}

@Test public void correctBehaviorWhenFilenameIsNull() {
   assumeTrue(bugFixed("13356"));  // bugFixed is not included in JUnit
   assertThat(parse(null), is(new NullDocument()));
}

With this release, a failed assumption will lead to the test being marked as passing, regardless of what the code below the assumption may assert. In the future, this may change, and a failed assumption may lead to the test being ignored: however, third-party runners do not currently allow this option.

We have included assumeTrue for convenience, but thanks to the inclusion of Hamcrest, we do not need to create assumeEquals, assumeSame, and other analogues to the assert* methods. All of those functionalities are subsumed in assumeThat, with the appropriate matcher.

A failing assumption in a @Before or @BeforeClass method will have the same effect as a failing assumption in each @Test method of the class.

Theories

More flexible and expressive assertions, combined with the ability to state assumptions clearly, lead to a new kind of statement of intent, which we call a "Theory". A test captures the intended behavior in one particular scenario. A theory captures some aspect of the intended behavior in possibly infinite numbers of potential scenarios. For example:

@RunWith(Theories.class)
public class UserTest {
  @DataPoint public static String GOOD_USERNAME = "optimus";
  @DataPoint public static String USERNAME_WITH_SLASH = "optimus/prime";

  @Theory public void filenameIncludesUsername(String username) {
    assumeThat(username, not(containsString("/")));
    assertThat(new User(username).configFileName(), containsString(username));
  }
}

This makes it clear that the user's filename should be included in the config file name, only if it doesn't contain a slash. Another test or theory might define what happens when a username does contain a slash.

UserTest will attempt to run filenameIncludesUsername on every compatible DataPoint defined in the class. If any of the assumptions fail, the data point is silently ignored. If all of the assumptions pass, but an assertion fails, the test fails.

The support for Theories has been absorbed from the Popper project, and more complete documentation can be found there.

Defining general statements in this way can jog the developer's memory about other potential data points and tests, also allows automated tools to search for new, unexpected data points that expose bugs.

Other changes

This release contains other bug fixes and new features. Among them: