Re: Alternate @Category annotations

Hi Kristian,

> We have received a patch over at maven-surefire (https://jira.codehaus.org/browse/SUREFIRE-833) that allows any annotation to be used as a replacement for @Category(mycategory.class). So you basically can make your own @IntegrationTest annotation.
> 
> I am sceptical to the patch in question, one reason being that it blows standardized tool 
> support out of the water. Is there any "conformant" way this can be implemented ?

One possibility (that I'm toying with an another domain) is to use a meta-annotation like @CategoryAnnotation.  Any annotation that is itself annotated with @CategoryAnnotation is a category annotation.

So you could declare:

@CategoryAnnotation
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Documented
public @interface IntegrationTest {}

Then you could mark any test:

@IntegrationTest
@Test
public void myIntegrationTest() { … }

Perhaps @CategoryAnnotation would require its target to take a few parameters, such as a description.

These meta-annotations can be slightly dizzying for some programmers, but they sure make the test annotations cleaner

Of course, for this to work, the framework would have to recognize @CategoryAnnotation and its meaning.

Dale

--
Dale Emery
Consultant to software teams and leaders
http://dhemery.com



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