[Haskell-cafe] [ANN] GenCheck - a generalized property-based testing framework

[Jacques Carette]

Test.GenCheck is a Haskell library for /generalized proposition-based 
testing/. It simultaneously generalizes *QuickCheck* and *SmallCheck*.

Its main novel features are:

  * introduces a number of /testing strategies/ and /strategy combinators/
  * introduces a variety of test execution methods
  * guarantees uniform sampling (at each rank) for the random strategy
  * guarantees both uniqueness and coverage of all structures for the
    exhaustive strategy
  * introduces an /extreme/ strategy for testing unbalanced structures
  * also introduces a /uniform/ strategy which does uniform sampling
    along an enumeration
  * allows different strategies to be mixed; for example one can
    exhaustively test all binary trees up to a certain size, filled with
    random integers.
  * complete separation between properties, generators, testing
    strategies and test execution methods

The package is based on a lot of previous research in combinatorics 
(combinatorial enumeration of structures and the theory of Species), as 
well as a number of established concepts in testing (from a software 
engineering perspective). In other words, further to the features 
already implemented in this first release, the package contains an 
extensible, general framework for generators, test case generation and 
management. It can also be very easily generalized to cover many more 
combinatorial structures unavailable as Haskell types.

The package also provides interfaces for different levels of usage. In 
other words, there is a 'simple' interface for dealing with 
straightforward testing, a 'medium' interface for those who want to 
explore different testing strategies, and an 'advanced' interface for 
access to the full power of GenCheck.

See http://hackage.haskell.org/package/gencheck for further details.

In the source repository (https://github.com/JacquesCarette/GenCheck), 
the file tutorial/reverse/TestReverseList.lhs shows the simplest kinds 
of tests (standard and deep for structures, or base for unstructured 
types) and reporting (checking, testing and full report) for the 
classical list reverse function. The files in tutorial/list_zipper show 
what can be done with the medium level interface (this tutorial is 
currently incomplete). The brave user can read the source code of the 
package for the advanced usage -- but we'll write a tutorial for this 
too, later.

User beware: this is gencheck-0.1, there are still a few rough edges.  
We plan to add a Template Haskell feature to this which should make 
deriving enumerators automatic for version 0.2.

Jacques and Gordon

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