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Flake it till you make it: how to detect and deal with flaky tests (Ep. 528)

But it works on my machine at least half the time!

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On today's episode we chat with Prof. Gregory Kapfhammer, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Allegheny College, and a specialist in the subject of flaky tests. He breaks down his definition of what makes a test flaky, how you can solve for it, and automated solutions that take some of the guesswork and busywork out of avoiding them altogether.

Episode Notes

There is a ton of great research to be found on Prof. Kapfhammer's website, including:

  • Flaky Tests: Finding and fixing unpredictable and harmful test cases
  • Database Testing: Automatically testing relational database schemas
  • Web Testing: Detecting and repairing poor responsive web page layout

We've written a bit about how Stack Overflow is upping its unit testing game and how you can evaluate multiple assertions in a single test.

Thanks to our lifeboat badge winner of the week, Survivor, for answering the question: Is it possible to find out if a value exists twice in an arraylist?

And thanks to Andre for writing in to let us know that yes, there are folks who code on mobile. He suggests trying: - Termux https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page can be used as a terminal emulator. I have all I need here: Vim, git, node.js, Python - Markor https://gsantner.net/project/markor.html has a HTML view

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