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Is Fitnesse ready for the Enterprise? It’s getting there.

I found Is Fitnesse Ready for Enterprise? by Naresh Jian today and was impressed to see that he’s rounded up answers for the most common complaints from those new to Fitnesse. I’m going to throw my feedback into this loop and hope to see the community respond. So what is Fitnesse missing? Infrastructure.

Critical infrastructure is a term used by governments to describe material assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_infrastructure

Critical infrastructure are those things listed by Jeff Atwood in What is “Modern Software Development”?. How does the modern software team using Fit/Fitnesse respond to the “highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of a software team” known as the Joel Test?

  1. Do you use source control?

Yes, but Fitnesse. . .

  1. Can you make a build in one step?

Yes, but Fitnesse. . .

  1. Do you make daily builds?

Yes, but Fitnesse. . .

  1. Do you have a bug database?

Yes, but Fitnesse. . .

  1. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?

Yes, but Fitnesse. . .

  1. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?

Yes, just let me wait for this Fitnesse test to finish executing

  1. Do you have a spec?

Yes, Fitnesse!

  1. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?

Yes, when classpaths in Fitnesse aren’t breaking.

  1. Do you use the best tools money can buy?

Yes, but you can’t buy Fitnesse!

  1. Do you have testers?

Everyone is a tester with Fitnesse!

  1. Do new candidates write code during their interview?

HR said we can’t ask our candidates about their Fitnesse har, punny. :(

  1. Do you do hallway usability testing?

What does usability have to do with Fitnesse?

So, now what?

Let’s follow Narish’s example and start building it, want to verify performance requirements Narish’s Fit Decorator might do what you need. Continuous integration problems? Go read Integrating Fit with CruiseControl. Trying to really test EJB’s? Running Fitnesse Inside the Container might just be the ticket!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Code, Fit/Fitnesse, Java, Testing, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Is Fitnesse ready for the Enterprise? It’s getting there.”

  1. Thanks. You seemed to have quite nicely summarized what I wanted to convey.

    You will soon see most of this part of standard fitnesse.

    Let me also answer your questions one by one:

    1. Do you use source control? We have a solution and this will soon be a part of fitnesse.

    2. Can you make a build in one step? I’m assuming you are talking of having an ant target. Yes I’m working on that and that would be part of fitnesse.

    3. Do you have a bug database? We have just moved fitnesse back to SourceForge and it does have a bug database.

    4. Do programmers have quiet working conditions? If you are testing a J2EE app, you can execute fit tests inside the container and most of the classpath issues will disappear. Have a look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/patang

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