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Apache AntUnit
Apache AntUnit™
Apache AntUnit is an Antlib that provides a test framework
for Apache Ant tasks and types.
Apache AntUnit 1.4.1
Jul 7, 2021 - Apache AntUnit 1.4.1 Released
Apache AntUnit 1.4.1 is now available for download as
binary
or
source
release.
This release fixes the antlib.xml descriptor so that AntUnit
can now be used with a user-defined URI rather than having
AntUnit's preferred URI hardcoded..
Idea
Initially all tests for Apache Ant tasks were written as individual
JUnit
test cases. Pretty
soon it was clear that most tests needed to perform common tasks
like reading a build file, initializing a project instance with
it and executing a target. At this point
BuildFileTest
was invented, a base class for almost all task test cases.
BuildFileTest works fine and in fact has been picked up by
the Ant-Contrib Project
and others as well.
Over time a new pattern evolved, more and more tests only
executed a target and didn't check any effects. Instead that
target contained the assertions as a
task. This is an example taken from the build file for the
ANTLR task (using Ant 1.7 features):
where the corresponding JUnit testcase has been reduced
to
...
public class ANTLRTest extends BuildFileTest {
private final static String TASKDEFS_DIR = "src/etc/testcases/taskdefs/optional/antlr/";
public ANTLRTest(String name) {
super(name);
public void setUp() {
configureProject(TASKDEFS_DIR + "antlr.xml");
public void tearDown() {
executeTarget("cleanup");
public void test3() {
executeTarget("test3");
...
This approach has a couple of advantages, one of them is that
it is very easy to translate an example build file from a bug
report into a test case. If you ask a user for a testcase for a
given bug in Ant, he now doesn't need to understand JUnit or how
to fit a test into Ant's existing tests any more.
AntUnit takes this approach to testing even further, it
removes JUnit completely and it comes with a set of predefined
tasks in order to reuse common kind
of checks.
It turns out that AntUnit lends itself as a solution to other
problems as well. The assertions are an easy way to validate a
setup before even starting the build process, for example.
AntUnit could also be used for functional and integration tests
outside of the scope of Ant tasks (assert contents of databases
after running an application, assert contents of HTTP responses
...). This is an area that will need more research.
Concepts
antunit Task
The
When called on a build file, the task will start a new Ant
project for that build file and scan for targets with names
that start with "test". For each such target it then will
Execute the target named setUp, if there is one.
Execute the target itself - if this target depends on
other targets the normal Ant rules apply and the dependent
targets are executed first.
Execute the target names tearDown, if there is one.
Assertions
The base task is
. It
accepts a single nested condition and throws a subclass of
BuildException named AssertionFailedException if that
condition evaluates to false.
This task could have been implemented using
and
but in fact it is a "real" task so that it is possible to
throw a subclass of BuildException. The
task catches this exception and
marks the target as failed, any other type of Exception
(including other BuildException) are test errors.
Together with
there are
many predefined assertions for common conditions, most of
these are only macros.
Other Tasks
The
captures all messages
that pass Ant's logging system and provides them via a
reference inside of the project. If you want to assert
certain log messages, you need to start this task (prior to
your target under test) and use the
assertion.
is a task container that
catches any BuildException thrown by tasks nested into it. If
no exception has been thrown it will cause a test failure (by
throwing an AssertionFailedException).
AntUnitListener
Part of the library is the
AntUnitListener
interface that can be used to record test results. The
relays test results to them.
Currently two implementations -
and
xmllistener
modelled after the "plain" and "xml"
JUnit listeners - are bundled with the library.
Examples
This is a way to test that
actually creates a file if it doesn't exist:
When running a task like
from a buildfile of its own you'll get a result that looks like
[au:antunit] Build File: /tmp/touch.xml
[au:antunit] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Time elapsed: 0.249 sec
[au:antunit] Target: testTouchCreatesFile took 0.183 sec
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 1 second
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