MSDN has featured an excellent Article on Mutation Testing.

Written by  James McCaffrey, and titled “Super-Simple Mutation Testing“, the article contains a definition of Mutation Testing as well as code examples.

Most testers I know have heard of mutation testing, but few have actually performed it. Mutation testing has the reputation of being difficult and requiring expensive third-party software tools. However, in this month’s column, I’ll show you how to create a super-simple (fewer than two pages of code and four hours of time) mutation testing system using C# and Visual Studio. By keeping the mutation testing system simple, you can get most of the benefits of a full-fledged mutation system at a fraction of the time and effort.

For mor details, please read Super-Simple Mutation Testing

Typemock,  the leading provider and pioneer of unit testing solutions announced today the official launch of Isolator ++.

Isolator ++ is the first isolation framework that allows developers to conduct easy unit testing for C++. As opposed to other unit testing solutions that require many sections of code to be modified in order to test it, Isolator ++ allows the user to mock any part of the code without any alterations. It also enables organizations to ensure that their final product meets industry standards.

The launch of Isolator ++ demonstrates Typemock’s ability to now offer solutions for easy unit testing for windows C++ developers in addition to .Net.

Isolator++ enables testing of any C/ C++ code (including complex code such as statics, globals and non virtual method) by allowing the user to intercept and fake their behaviours. The user can write tests with minimal lines of code, a major improvement on other frameworks which require multiple lines to make effective readable tests. The API is specifically designed to make tests more concise, more resistant to production code changes and easier to understand for new users. Isolator ++ works with all testing frameworks including Google Test and UnitTest++.

“Adding C++ solutions to our product range is a natural step for Typemock” commented Eli Lopian Typemock‘s founder and CEO. “With a growing number of developers writing in C++, especially with the increased popularity and demand for smart phones and other advanced technologies, there is an obvious need for an easy solution for C++ unit testing which ensures that the final product surpasses all regulatory requirements. This is imperative for the military, avionics, automotive and medical device industries where an error in the code can be critical.”

FreeFileSync is an Open-Source folder comparison and synchronization tool. It is optimized for highest performance and usability without restricted or overloaded UI interfaces.

Available as a GNU Licence, FreeFileSync uses the C++ language and is free to use.

Key features include

• Compare files (bytewise or by date) and synchronize them.
• No limitations: An arbitrary number of files can be synchronized.
• Unicode support.
• Network support.
• Synchronization database for propagation of deleted files and conflict detection
• Support for multiple folder pairs with distinct configuration
• Full support for Windows/Linux Symbolic Links and Windows Junction Points.
• Lean & easily accessible UI: Highly optimized for speed and huge sets of data.
• Algorithms coded in C++ completely.
• All progress indicators optimized for maximum performance!
• Create Batch Jobs for automated synchronization with or without GUI.
• Focus on usability:
  • Only necessary functionality on UI: no overloaded menus or icon jungle.
  • Select all folders via drag & drop.
  • Last used configuration and screen settings are saved automatically.
  • Maintain and load different configurations by drag & drop, load-button or commandline.
  • Double-click to start external application (e.g. show file in Windows Explorer)
  • Copy & paste all grid data as text
  • Delete superfluous/temporary files directly on main grid.
  • Right-click context menu.
  • Status information and error reporting
  • Sort file-lists by name, size or date.

• Support for filesizes larger than 4 GB.
• Option to move files to Recycle Bin instead of deleting/overwriting them.
• Ignore directories “\RECYCLER” and “\System Volume Information” with default Filter. (Windows only)

• Localized versions are available for many languages.
• Delete before copy: Avoid disc space shortages for large sync-jobs.
• Filter functionality to include/exclude files from synchronization (without requiring a re-compare!).
• Include/exclude specific files from synchronization temporarily.
• Create sync jobs via GUI to synchronize automatically (can be scheduled or executed via double-click).
• Handle daylight saving time changes on FAT/FAT32 volumes correctly.
• Portable version (.zip) available.
• Native 64-Bit version.
• Support for \\?\ path prefix for unrestricted path length. (Windows only)
• Check for updates from within FreeFileSync automatically.
• Copy locked files using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service. (Windows only)
• Create regular backups with macros %time%, %date% within directory names
• Copy file and folder create/access/mo

For more information and ways to access please visit testertools.com

If you’re looking for a decent build tool for C/C++ programming languages, why not try CodeLites open-source, cross platform IDE.  Built and tested on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, Ubuntu 9.10, and Mac OSX 10.5.6. Early versions of this product had known bugs. But this version shouid fix all that

Code lite in action.

CodeLite main features are as follows:

* Generic support for compilers

* Can be easily extended with plugins (several plugins are already included in the installer)

* Built-in GDB support, with the following features included:

o Watches table – add persistent watches with a single click

o Quick Watch – right click on a variable to expand it

o Locals tree – automatically displays the current stack variables (also displays *this if available)

o Threads view – contains a list of currently-running threads; switch between them with a single click

o Breakpoint management – ‘add/remove breakpoint’ management panel

o Automatic tooltip

o Memory view

* Subversion plugin (based on the command line tool)

* cscope plugin

* External Tools plugin

* Gizmos plugin – for the creation of: C++ classes, wxWidgets projects, CodeLite plugins

* Makefile based build system

* Project explorer (Workspace view)

* File Explorer

* Imports MSVS workspace/projects and converts them to use a GNU-based makefile

* Active-document outline

* Sophisticated database-based Code Completion mechanism; a default database is supplied which contains symbols for wxWidgets, STL and standard headers

o Function’s call tip

o Hover tip

o Comments tips

o Members List

o Supports C++ templates, namespaces and other advance features of the language

o Automatically add include statement for symbols

o Code Refactoring (rename class/method/member)

o Implement all unimplemented methods

o Implement method

o Move functions implementation to another source file

o Generate setters/getters

* Quickly open resources in the editor using ‘Find Resource in workspace’

* Quickly open types in the editor using ‘Find Type in workspace’

* XML-based syntax highlighting, comes with the following:

o C/C++. Java. Perl. XML. Makefile. Lua. Diff files. PHP. JavaScript, Python, HTML, ASP,

* Text Folding

* Bookmarks

* Find In Files

* Replace In Files

* Highly Configurable

* Built-in doxygen comment generator for functions/classes

* And much more…

CodeLite is distributed under the terms of the GPLv2 license.and this version

You can download codelite here

MsvcConf is an external dependency tracker for Microsoft Visual Studio, and is designed to automatically update the include and library paths for one or more Visual C++ projects.

Using a simple XML format configuration file you can specify the header and library files required by one or more projects in a Visual Studio solution, and MsvcConf will update the project paths to point to the locations of those headers at build time, within Visual Studio.

If parts of the project are optional, pre-processor definitions can be added to the project’s pre-processor settings to indicate if the relevant headers and/or libraries exist on the build machine.

VcTester is a highly cost-performance covearge testing tool for C codes and C++ codes, and it works with Visual C/C++.  VcSmith is the shareware version of VcTester, and offers relatively simple functions.  VcAuto is the testing tool of VcTester extending to auto testing and diagnosis testing.  It is still under development, and will be released in the form of shareware.

View TesterTools dedicated page for this tool.

Visual Code Smith is a free software development platform that works with Visual C/C++. C++ code debugging is supported in V3!

To a certain extent, VcSmith is the combination of Source Insight, Visual Assist, CppUnit, and VC debugger, as well as the integration of advantages of multiple tools.  However, such integration is not simple accumulation, but organic combination of three major activities (coding, debugging and testing) of C/C++ software development, based on language mapping and online debugging technologies, to make the activities more efficient and with high quality assurance.

VcSmith V3 is suitable for people dealing with VC codes all days, but never satisfying with the development efficiency of the programming tools or the convenience of existing tools, or failing to integrate functions of multiple tools. VcSmith is a smart choice for them.

VcSmith is especially applicable to those who have (or will) adopted (or adopt) the continuous integration development mode.  Its all-in-one application environment, concise user interface, and complete external tool integration ability can always meet the requirements of those adhering to the philosophy of IID but lacking appropriate tools.

Using VcSmith can improve the development efficiency and coding quality by 30% at the same time!

View TesterTools dedicated page for this tool.

VectorCAST/C++ is an integrated software test solution that significantly reduces the time, effort, and cost associated with testing C/C++ software components necessary for validating safety- and mission-critical embedded systems.

VectorCAST/C++ parses your source code and invokes code generators to automatically create the test code (stubs and drivers) required to construct a complete, executable test harness.  Once the test harness is constructed, utilities can be used to build and execute test cases, show code covered, and report static measurements.  Test data is maintained separately from the test harness, enabling easy automatic regression testing.

Key Features

* Complete test-harness construction for unit and integration testing
* Stubs and drivers built automatically
* Test execution from GUI or scripts
* Code-coverage analysis
* Regression testing
* Automatic tests based on decision paths
* User-defined tests for requirements-based testing
* Automated coding standards enforcement with C and C++
* Test execution playback to assist in debugging
* Integration with Telelogic’s Rhapsody® Modeling and DOORS® Requirements Tools

View TesterTools dedicated page for this tool.

Testwell CTC++ is a powerful instrumentation-based test coverage and dynamic analysis tool for C and C++ code. As a coverage tool, CTC++ shows the coverage all the way to the Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC) level as required by DO-178B projects.

As a dynamic analysis tool, CTC++  shows the execution counters in the code, i.e. more than plain boolean coverage information. You can also use CTC++ to measure function execution costs (normally time) and to enable function entry/exit tracing at test time.

For more details go to the official site