Keep your unit tests separate
Keep your unit tests separate from your regular code.
This includes any frameworks, stubs,
skeletons and other supports that you use for testing.
Here's why:
- You can easily exclude test code from production releases. This makes
production releases smaller and eliminates that nagging feeling when you
have 100MB of test code testing 10MB of real code.
- Your regular code should remain elegant, preferring fewer classes and
managing complexity via abstractions and design patterns. Test code is more
use-case oriented, so you keep adding tests over time. These styles
have different 'scents': test code mixed among regular code looks like cruft
and adding tests looks 'messy'. By keeping them separate, adding tests
feels more natural, and refactoring your regular code feels more natural.
I.e. by keeping regular code and test code separate and recognizing the different
approaches to them, you encourage more testing and more refactoring.