Toronto Delphi Users Group

This was the first half of our discussion on unit testing. We talked about the history, some of the common terminology and some different use cases where it would be useful.

Next month we will continue with a concrete example to demonstrate how you would use TDD.

DUnitX is a free and open source project started by VSoft Technologies and has become the standard for unit testing in Delphi. It supports Delphi 2010 and later and has been bundled with the product since Delphi XE8.

DUnitX uses console based output by default and includes experimental GUI based output for VCL and FireMonkey in their demos, but they recommend using TestInsight, another free project that lets you run your unit tests in the Delphi IDE.

If you are using a version of Delphi that’s earlier than Delphi 2010, you can still use DUnit, which supports Delphi 5 and up (Delphi 4 if you go back far enough) and has also shipped with Delphi since Delphi 2005.

Free stuff!

Embarcadero is offering both Delphi and C++ Builder 10.1 starter editions for free for a limited time. I don’t know how long the offer will last, but the serial numbers don’t expire, so if you want to get a license, go grab one. If you don’t have one, you will need to sign up for an EDN (Embarcadero Developer Network) account.

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/promotional-download
https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter/promotional-download

Come join us for the first of two meetings that will be dedicated to the topic of unit testing and TDD.

Tuesday, September 27th, 2016
Fairview Library – 35 Fairview Mall Dr, North York – Room 4
6:00PM to 8:00PM

We’re back from our summer break.

This month we will be talking about the very broad and sometimes controversial topic of unit testing, the value of unit tests and test driven development (TDD) and the different tools that are available to get you up and running.

I obviously think these are useful techniques, and I will try to explain why I think so, but we want to hear your stories and anecdotes, too. Both for and against. If you have some specific questions or things you would like to see covered, please let us know in the comments and we will do our best.

I expect this to be a lively discussion. So lively that I doubt we will get to everything in one meeting, so the October meeting will also be about unit testing, covering some of the things we don’t get to this month and answering some of the questions that come up.

I’m looking forward to this one. Please join us.

Tuesday, September 27th, 2016
Fairview Library – 35 Fairview Mall Dr, North York – Room 4 (I think)
6:00PM to 8:00PM

About the location: The Fairview Library is on the north side of the Fairview Mall. Subway service is available and parking is free. Our September, October and November meetings will be at this location.

If you’re interested in getting your hands on the latest version of Delphi, Embarcadero is making their Starter edition free for a limited time.

http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/2016-august-free-delphi-training.html

Thanks to Warren Postma for giving a great presentation on some different bug tracking software and the benefits of integrating them with your source control software (see May meeting).

One of the things that struck me was how easy it is to include rich content (formatting, images, etc) and links to other issues and source code. The functionality goes well beyond a simple list of bugs and includes project planning, research and documentation.

Warren showed off pieces of Redmine, Github (includes issue tracking)  GitLab and Jira (makers of BitBucket), but there are lots of options available.

Here is his summary:

As mentioned in the meeting, I don’t necessarily agree with his last point and prefer the idea of hosting in-house. Fortunately, most of the popular products have options to host your content for you or to have you host it yourself.

I will set up a new source control and bug tracking environment myself and see if I feel the same afterwards.

We are taking our summer break, so no meetings are scheduled for July and August. We will reconvene in September. Stay tuned for details.

Correction: Warren showed off GitLab, not GitHub. My mistake.

Warren Postma will be talking about bug tracking software, also known as issue tracking or project tracking software.

Whether you are a solo developer or you are working on multiple projects with other developers, if you have ever been tempted to create a text file todo list or a spreadsheet or even build a home grown app to manage the features and bugs that you need to deal with so that nothing falls through the cracks, then bug tracking software can absolutely make your life easier, and there are lots of options available.

Last month we talked about source control software. A lot of popular bug tracking software integrates with popular source control software, making it easy to track what is fixed and when and putting check-ins in context with references to the bugs or features that they address.

Please join us.

Thursday, June 30th, 2016
North York Central Library – 5120 Yonge Street
6:00PM to 8:00PM

This will be our last meeting before the summer break. We would love to hear what you about would like to see presented when we resume in September. Here are a couple of ideas:

– Building multi-tier applications using DataSnap
– Unit testing and TDD (this will probably cover two meetings)

Let us know what you think.

We talked about version control software. Here are some of the links were discussed:

There are lots of options available. Fortunately, the most popular ones are also free and include Subversion, Mercurial and GIT.

Subversion uses the centralised model while Mercurial and GIT are distributed. There are technical differences, but one of the things I like best about the distributed model is how easy it is to continue working without being connected to the central repository.

If you don’t want to use the command line interface, all three of these are supported in the Rad Studio IDE. My personal favourite is a free shell extension called Tortoise, which is available for Subversion, Mercurial and GIT among others. Yet another free tool called SourceTree supports both Mercurial and GIT.

Setting up your own hosting isn’t difficult in most cases, but there are free services for both public and private repositories that make them easy to share, offer additional tools or just let you keep your source code off-site for safety purposes. These include GitHub, BitBucket and GitLab.

We will be talking about source control and how it can help improve you software projects.

Wednesday, May 25th, 2016
North York Central Library – 5120 Yonge Street
6:00PM to 8:00PM

Note the date change. We are meeting on Wednesday. I will post a reminder before the meeting.

Getting back to our semi-regular series on software development best practices, we will be talking about Source Control, sometimes called Version Control.

We’ll talk about why you would want to use source control, how to get started and some of the unexpected additional benefits that it can have on your software development projects. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. In fact, some of the most popular options are completely free and you can get things set up in a few minutes.

Please join us and share your experiences.

Wednesday, May 25th, 2016
North York Central Library – 5120 Yonge Street
6:00PM to 8:00PM