Feedback Wanted: Test framework for verifying topic output (both unit and integration testing)

[lkwatson]

@Martin_Guenther

I like your ideas and think this could be very useful. However, one should keep in mind that writing a complete specification of the expected behavior of a node is as complex as writing the node itself; if you had a complete mapping from input to output, you could just execute it instead of running the node. So writing a full functional mapping of input to output is probably infeasible. In your example, you’re doing something else: You specify invariants that should hold (velocity magnitude is clamped, and dv/dt corresponds with accel_max), while leaving open some degrees of freedom in the behavior of the node. I think this is the way to do it.

This is a great way to put it. My concern is precisely how to express invariants generally enough such that development of the node (or nodes) isn’t hindered by the tests. Cumbersome tests are likely to be ignored if they break and are hard to fix.

@Martin_Guenther

By the way, are you familiar with rostest ?

Yes, should have mentioned that this will ideally become a rostest node where pubs/subs/invariants are supplied via yaml.