To the question Am I unit testing or integration testing? I have answered, a bit provocative: Do your test and let other people spend time with taxonomy.
For me the distinction between various levels of testing is technically pointless: often the same tools are used, the same skills are needed, the same objective is to be reached: remove software faults. At the same time, I can understand that traditional workflows, which most developers use, need this distinction. I just don’t feel at ease with traditional workflows.
So, my question aims at better understanding what appears a controversy to me and at gathering various points of view about whether or not this separation between various levels of testing is relevant.
Is my opinion wrong? Do other workflows exist which don’t emphasize on this separation (maybe agile methods)? What is your experience on the subject?
Precision: I am perfectly aware of the definitions (for those who aren’t, see this question). I think I don’t need a lesson about software testing. But feel free to provide some background if your answer requires it.
Performance is typically the reason I segregate ‘unit’ tests from ‘functional’ tests.
Groups of unit tests ought to execute as fast as possible and be able to be run after every compilation.
Groups of functional tests might take a few minutes to execute and get executed prior to checkin, maybe every day or every other day depending on the feature being implemented.
If all of the tests were grouped together, I’d never run any tests until just before checkin which would slow down my overall pace of development.