Regression testing: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:53, 18 August 2005

Revision as of 15:01, 2 September 2005

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Experience has shown that as software is developed, this kind of reemergence of faults is quite common. Sometimes it occurs because a fix gets lost through poor [[revision control]] practices (or simple human error in revision control), but just as often a fix for a problem will be "fragile" - if some other change is made to the program, the fix no longer works. Finally, it has often been the case that when some feature is redesigned, the same mistakes will be made in the redesign that were made in the original implementation of the feature.

Therefore, in most software development situations it is considered good practice that when a bug is located and fixed, a test that exposes the bug is recorded and regularly retested after subsequent changes to the program. This is often done with a 'test suite', a tool that gives an environment to execute all the regression test cases automatically; some projects even set up automated systems to automatically re-run all regression tests at specified intervals and report any regressions. Common strategies are to run such a system after every sucessfulsuccessful compile (for small projects), every night, or once a week.

Regression testing is an integral part of the [[extreme programming]] software development methodology. In this methodology, design documents are replaced by extensive, repeatable, and automated testing of the entire software package at every stage in the [[software development cycle]].