The dos and don'ts when testing

  • You need a test suite in order to execute →unit tests. The test suite in Excel format makes it simpler to modify the test suite. See "Structure of the Excel test suite, modifying the worksheets" for details.

  • Examples for test cases are provided under: Examples for tests

  • See "Restrictions when using the test frameworks" for a collection of all known restrictions regarding the test framework.

  • If you are using a division within a POU under test (e.g. the statement X := Y / (A-B) within an ST-code), create an additional test sequence within the test case. Within this test sequence, specify test data leading to a division by zero. If you execute an SiL-test with coverage but without this test sequence, there are branches which will not be covered.

  • When creating/opening a test project in a variant of Neuron Power Engineer that is providing the test framework and when subsequently executing the tests, so-called internal meta files and other test files are automatically created. Usually, these files are not relevant. As a consequence and by default, these files are not displayed within the test project. If you create the test project within a GitHub repo, these files are listed within the appropriate Git commit. Neuron recommends listing the following files/folders within the file .gitignore in order to exclude them from tracing by Git:

    Name

    Meaning

    file red.xml

    internal file which is automatically created when creating/opening the project

    folder libspecs

    folder with internal files which are automatically created when creating/opening the project

    .settings\tb_SiL\tb_SiL.rule or .settings\tb_PiL\tb_PiL.rule

    folder src-gen\tb_sil\ or  src-gen\tb_pil\

    folder target\tb_sil\ or target\tb_pil\

    internal files which are automatically created/updated when executing a SiL- or PiL-test

    But do not exclude the following files from tracing by Git (even though the report for the test coverage is not visible within the project by default):

    • the POUs under test (file-name.file-extension– e.g. MyTest.iecst)

    • the files containing the test suites for the POUs (POU-name.robot and POU-name.xlsm)

    • the files for the test execution that are located in the same folder as the files containing the test suites (or in subfolders)
      These files are at least: consoleLog.txt, test report report.html, test log log.html and files containing information on the execution of the SiL-/Pil-test (e.g. test_POU-name.SiL.tstlog, summaryTestReport.SiL.xml, POU-name.SiL.xml, report for the test coverage POU-name.SiL.file-extension.gcov)