Misko Hevery just put up a blog post describing how to configure Eclipse to run your test suite after every save. It doesn't seem like a bad idea, and I'm definitely going to try it out, but even with a test suite that runs in under a second, I wonder how annoying it would be. I'm an obsessive saver, I can't seem to help myself. Even if I'm only looking at a file I need to format it then save it... how would that be if it took a second to do.
"Here is a common scenario. Your tests are green and you start doing whole bunch of refactorings which you think are trivial and safe. When you are done you run the tests and it is broken. The problem is that you did ten little things and you don’t know which of the ten things you did broke the code. The solution is to run the test more often, but we just forget."
I'm not sure this really is a common scenario I run into, but it's an intriguing idea to run tests on save. I really believe that a change in process effects your product. Run on save would certainly change my process, but how would it change my product?
Misko's post reminded me of JUnit Max Kent Beck's Eclipse Plugin, which has the similar feature of run tests on save. There are a bunch of interesting features, like displaying test failures like compilation failures, and keeping JUnit unobtrusive. There is one un-interesting feature, it's in beta, and has a monthly subscription. I'd love to try it, even pay for a demo (I think :P), but knowing myself, whenever I subscribe to something, I never unsubscribe, even if I'm not using the software or reading the magazine. So I'll have to wait on trying out JUnit Max.
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