Week 8 [Kept as draft & published late – Added to the following week’s post]

The vast majority of discussion and work done by the group consisted of preparation for integration week. A major point of discussion in the meeting was the filesize of the exercise videos exceeding the GitLab limit. I suggested using VLC media’s Convert/Save option as a method of compressing the videos, although I am not responsible for editing the videos. The group decided upon compressing the resolution of the videos and using Google Drive as a temporary hosting alternative for now (for each build, the videos will need to be manually copied into the project’s Videos folder.
I made sure I was able to present the most recent build that Peter presented to the group. Besides that I didn’t have much to do this week.
Time spent this week = ~2 hours.

Integration Week

Monday
Following the first meeting of integration week, it seems my role will remain largely around testing. As a group we feel fairly confident that at the end of this week we will be able to produce a functional program. A lot of the coding work this week will involve tweaking minor aspects.
I noticed feedback from Chris on the Test Specification that we had not properly amended. A run of tests that together check for the primary ‘exercise routine’ function of the program involve tests that must be considered simultaneously to assess their pass criteria. Chris noted that this is not clear for the person using the Test Specification to run tests. He suggested collating this run of tests into a single entry, then adding a reference to an appendix entry that listed them as subtests. I implemented this suggestion.
I also made sure I could run the latest build of the program on my computer.
Time spent today = 3.5 hours.
Tuesday
Today I attended the meeting, and then drafted a Test Report template to be filled out whenever System Tests are done on the latest build. The template for the Unit Test reports is similar. I decided to omit the ‘Req being tested’, ‘Input’ and ‘Output’ columns in the template, as I thought that would be unneccesary clutter for someone who is reading the report. The tester filling out a report can just access the Test Spec for the precise instructions.
Time spent today = ~2 hours.
Wednesday
In the morning meeting I stressed the need for JUnit test to be added to the code. These tests should check individual methods, and in doing so test the proper functioning of their parent class. After the meeting I made attempts to start drafting these unit tests. This is something I have found difficult, for a few reasons. The first of which is my unfamiliarity with JavaFX (the use of which our code employs often). The second is that many methods in the code do not return some object or variable, but instead alter the state of its parent object in some way. I have found this to be difficult to write JUnit tests for and so I think I will need help from other group members, particular those more familiar with the code/program design.
Time spent today = ~7 hours.
Thursday
I’ve had some personal difficulties today, so I missed the morning briefing. But I was present throughout the afternoon to the evening. I helped with tweaking the code, and as a group we made progress on testing the code against JUnit tests. By the end of the day we considered the program to be fully function according the Requirements Specification, so I filled out a Test Report on Draft 8.5. The final day should involve changing/adding only minor aspects of the project’s build.
Time spent today = ~4 hours.
Friday
For the final day the group spent most of the time cleaning up frayed edges of the code. I helped with adding JavaDoc comments to ensure the code had full documentation. I also assisted group members in getting the latest builds of the project to run on their machines. It seems there is some bug that makes adding the JavaFX library to a project more difficult. Also when we changed the program structure, it was necessary to invalidate caches to get the program to recognise class paths. I was further involved in some final tweaks to the directory and program structure before we released the finished build to the GitLab repository.
Time spent today = 8 hours.
In total, approximately 30 hours spent this week.