Alex Collins - 5 Tips for Unit Testing Threaded Code

Alex Collins - 5 Tips for Unit Testing Threaded Code

Here's a few tips on how take make testing your code for logical correctness (as opposed to multi-threaded correctness).

I find that there are essentially two stereotypical patterns with threaded code:

1. Task orientated - many, short running, homogeneous tasks, often run within the Java 5 executor framework,
2. Process orientated - few, long running, heterogeneous tasks, often event based (waiting on notification), or polling (sleeping between cycles), often expressed using a thread or runnable.

Testing either type of code can be hard; the work is done in another thread, and therefore notification of completion can be opaque, or is hidden behind a level of abstraction.

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