[TIP] automated test generation

[Matt Good]

On Feb 25, 2008, at 6:14 AM, Mauricio Seiji wrote:

> Hi, do you know if there is any automated test generation tool for  
> Pyhton (it doesn't need to be free). I've used Codepro for java and  
> it was quite useful, but I haven't found anything similar for python  
> so far.

I don't know of anything quite like that for Python, but PeckCheck may  
be of interest:
http://www.accesscom.com/~darius/software/clickcheck.html

It doesn't generate code, but it generates data sets based on a  
specification to test a broad array of inputs on your code.

I looked over the Codepro documentation, but I'm still a bit unclear  
on what it's really doing.  I'm skeptical of the quality of tests it  
would generate.  It seems like testing is something that requires the  
developer to write things that test the *intent* of the function which  
is impossible for a computer to guess.  Also, if there are bugs in the  
original implementation a generated test could enforce the existence  
of these bugs rather than catching them.  Maybe I'm missing something,  
but code generators generally make me uneasy.

-- Matt