GSoC Status Update - Week 1

24 Jun 2013

This is a status update for my Google Summer of Code 2013 project - implementing advanced statistics importers for Amarok. Please read the first post if you would like to know more about the project.

Long days and pleasant nights.

The first week of GSoC has passed. What I had scheduled for that week (and I'm still getting around to placing the schedule around here) was "Drafting up test cases for FastForward and iTunes importers."

I admit that it doesn't sound too exciting, and neither does the next one which is all about implementing these drafted tests. The reason for that is that I'm currently in the middle of final exams; as of writing this posts, three of them are behind me and three are left to go. The last exam is July 2nd, so all of the real fun will start after that.

So, let's write about what I actually did that week, which amounts to this: I went through the current importers implementation and noted what they currently do. I then compared this with what the reimplemented importers should do, and then noted on my whiteboard what kind of thing I should then be testing. I also familiarized myself with QTestLib and KDE helper methods for testing and prepared a blank test suite, so I'm basically all set to implement things. And that's about all.

I want to write a bit about why I want to implement these tests at all. Their purpose isn't to test the implementation of current importers, because they're being replaced anyway. What I want to do is assert how the logic works right now, and then carry on these assertions to the new implementation. The bottom line is: they'll make sure that the new implementation is no worse than the old one, which is one of my project's goals. :)

Signing off before I write everything I have about tests, and then have nothing to write about next week. Thanks for reading!