How to organize different java source folders in netbeans (for testing)?

Question

I am developing a project in Netbeans (8.0.2) that uses JUnit (4.x) for testing application code (in a Netbeans module). In the same module I also have some integration tests. I found a way to separate application code, unit tests and integration tests by putting the latter into a separate folder under MODULE_PATH\\test\\qa-functional\\src. By that, the Netbeans IDE puts those three semantical different kinds of classes into individual folders:

The problem is, my functional tests tend to grow complex, so I would prefer to have them, well, unit tested. However if create a unit test (in the Unit Test Package) for a class of the functional test package, the test does not compile. Seems to be some class path issues.

I know I can put the unit test of the functional test in the functional test package as well (and I will do so if this question does not provide me with some solution), but anyway, is there a way to solve this in Netbeans?

I found a bad solution, changing the order of ant targets in common.xml (in line 610 of NB 8.0.2). But that is obiously not portable, changes with a new version of Netbeans,.. So not really a solution. See details in Netbeans Forum: Classpath problem when unit testing functional tests

In Eclipse, I would simply add a new source folder on the Java build path. But that mechanism does not exist in Netbeans? For clearification, I added a screenshot.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

You are are trying to do a wrong thing :

• unit tests should verify the smallest possible functionality, eg that a method is producing the expected result
• functional tests in NetBeans represent integration tests, tests when you treat the application as a black box

It does not make sense to "unit test" the functionality in the "functional tests". NetBeans treats the tests folders independent so that they are not on each other's classpath, that's why it does not work in NetBeans.