Timothy Weber wrote:
> Gratuitous metric: On one 270,000-line desktop app, I have 209 test
> cases that run in under 8 minutes that cover nearly every feature to
> some degree, and are run before each check-in.

Wow. I've never worked on a project of this magnitude. How long does it take 
to compile this beast? :)

> This has got me thinking... I wonder whether it would be practical to
> set up automated unit tests using MPSIM?  Getting the output in an
> automated way is the main hurdle, I think.
>
> Wouldn't be quite as good as testing the hardware, but a lot better than
> no tests at all.

I think this warrants a new thread: [EE] Test driven design for embedded 
applications

>> Do you use a naming convention that identifies a funciton as belonging to 
>> a
>> particular module? I started prepending module name to the function name,
>> and found this technique to be quite useful. For example, you can tell 
>> that
>> Uart_Putc() is in uart.c, Adc_GetValue() is in adc.c, and so on --  
>> withouth
>> having to Ctrl-Shift-F for it.
>
> Yes, I tend to do that.  Though sometimes I'll tend more toward names
> that sound like English phrases when available, so the name may not go
> first. E.g., in buttons.h:
>
> void InitButtons(void);
> void CheckButtons(void);
> byte GetButton(void);
>
> or in uiTime.h:
>
> void ResetUITimer(void);
> void InitUiTime_Timer0(void);
> void InitUiTime_Timer1(void);
> void InitUiTime_60Hz(void);
> void UiTimeUpdate60(void);
> unsigned char UiTimeInterrupt(void);
>
> Always prepending the module name has the advantage that you can type it
> and then ask for auto-completion.  But somehow I still prefer "verb" or
> "verbNoun" (but the above examples show I'm not consistent about it).

I think of it this way: I'm not performing the action, I'm telling objects 
to do whatever it is I want them to do. So in a normal scenario, it goes 
like this:

- Hey, UART! Send this out for me: "Hello World". Or,

- Hey, ADC! Give me a reading on channel 1.

In C++, you would say: Uart.Send("Hello World"). C doesn't have classes, but 
you can say: Uart_Send("Hello World").

In your example, I would name the functions thus:

UiTime_ResetUiTimer()
UiTime_InitTimer0()
UiTime_HandleInterrupt()
etc...

Yes, it takes some time to get used to. :)

By the way, what do these function do?

> void InitUiTime_60Hz(void);
> void UiTimeUpdate60(void);

Regarding initialization code, I came to the conclusion that a program needs 
to have a separate object, Initializer, that is responsible for initializing 
all the other modules. As tempting as it is to have a Uart_Init() function, 
doing so creates too much coupling b/w the Uart module and the code that is 
using its functions. IMHO, it's better to say Initializer_InitializeUart().

>> Private functions are declared static in a
>> module, and prepended with a p_.
>
> I appreciate all of those Hungarian-style conventions... but I don't
> tend to use them.  First, because it makes it less English-like (I hear
> all the p's in my head); second, because it can get broken.  But I don't
> feel strongly about it.

Initially, I hated p_ so much that I just used two underscores instead. But 
as Tamas, Olin and others have pointed out, it's not a good idea. I just 
feel that it helps me to have a clear distinction which functions in a 
module are public, and which ones are private.

Vitaliy 

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