Test-driven development
Test-driven development, or TDD, means writing tests along with your code. It's not about writing tests after you're done, but making testing a habit as part of your development process.
- Tests should be written alongside your implementation.
- New features need to have new tests for it.
- Features can't be merged unless tests pass.
What to test
A healthy code base has tests written in this priority (most important to least):
- Unit tests
- Smoke tests
- Integration tests
Units tests are easy to make and are a natural part of the process of writing models. Smoke tests are small and also easy to make. Integration tests are larger and harder to maintain, so it's often more economical to prioritize writing smaller unit tests.
In the Git workflow
The main branches master and develop must always be in a working state. Pull requests can't be merged until their tests pass.
Next: What are unit, integration, and smoke tests?