The Testing Workgroup is a team that helps guide the experience, libraries, and tools for testing Swift code.

The Testing Workgroup will:

• Govern the Swift Testing and Corelibs XCTest projects and conduct reviews of their feature proposals.
• Identify improvements which would address the needs of testing in the Swift community.
• Pursue long-term feature directions outlined in the Swift Testing vision document.
• Promote the integration of testing functionality and libraries in related tools.
• Channel feedback to other workgroups, steering groups, and the Core Team about unmet testing needs of the Swift community.

The current Testing Workgroup consists of the following people:

• Brandon Williams (@mbrandonw)
• Brian Croom (@briancroom)
• Jonathan Grynspan (@grynspan)
• Maarten Engels (@maartene)
• Paul LeMarquand (@plemarquand)
• Rachel Brindle (@younata)
• Stuart Montgomery, Chair (@smontgomery)

Charter

The ultimate goal of the Testing Workgroup is to enhance the experience and utility of authoring and running tests in Swift to improve software quality across the ecosystem. In pursuit of that goal, the workgroup develops libraries like Swift Testing which implement core functionality needed by the community; it coordinates with the maintainers of commonly-used tools, IDEs, and CI systems to integrate them and promote testing workflows; and when necessary, it collaborates with other Swift community groups to pursue testing-related improvements in their areas. Some areas of frequent collaboration with other groups include:

• the swift test subcommand of swift-package-manager;
• the testing subsystem in the vscode-swift plugin; and
• the static test discovery logic in sourcekit-lsp.

A central function of the workgroup is conducting community reviews of features and API proposals for the Swift Testing project. Its governance of that project is guided by its accompanying vision document. The workgroup also looks for opportunities to deepen integration of testing libraries with tools and IDEs, enable additional styles of testing (such as performance or UI), or to resolve problems which impact testing workflows. Members of the workgroup regularly evaluate emerging trends in the Swift ecosystem, and discuss how testing could better support them.

Membership

Membership in the Testing Workgroup is contribution-based and expected to evolve over time. Adding new members and removing inactive ones is subject to a vote by the existing members and requires unanimous agreement. Membership is limited to ten members in total to keep the group small enough to be effective.

The Core Team selects one member of the workgroup as the chair. The chair has no special authority over the workgroup, but they are responsible for ensuring its smooth functioning, including by:

• organizing and leading regular meetings,
• ensuring that the workgroup communicates effectively with the community, and
• coordinating meetings between workgroup representatives and other Swift workgroups or teams when necessary.

If you’d like to join the workgroup, send a message to @testing-workgroup on the Forums and you will be invited to the next available group meeting to discuss it more. See Community participation for examples of ways to contribute and demonstrate your interest to the group.

Workgroup members will try to make a decision independently by consensus whenever possible, and will raise issues to the Core Team when there are particular challenges with reaching consensus on significant decisions.

Meetings

The Testing Workgroup meets biweekly on Monday at 1:00PM PT (USA Pacific). Meetings take place in even numbered weeks, unless otherwise communicated in advance.

Many workgroup meetings are meant for open discussion and any Swift community member may attend by sending a message to @testing-workgroup beforehand to request an invite. Some meetings are reserved for private discussion by group members, for example to make a decision on a proposal under review.

Communication

The Testing Workgroup communicates with the broader Swift community in the swift-testing Forum category. The workgroup can also be contacted privately by sending a message to @testing-workgroup.

If any significant decisions are reached during one of the workgroup’s regular meetings, a member will post about them in the Forums within one week. The outcome of each proposal review will be announced by its review manager in a separate thread dedicated to that proposal.

Community participation

Everyone is invited to help improve Swift’s testing experience and participate in the Testing Workgroup’s initiatives. Here are some ways to consider participating:

• Discuss ideas on the Swift Forums. You can create new topics in the swift-testing category, or add the testing tag to any topic.
• Open GitHub issues to track enhancements or report bugs in the projects governed by the Testing Workgroup, such as swift-testing.
• Contribute bug fixes or enhancements to swift-testing. (See CONTRIBUTING.)
• Expand swift-testing to support additional platforms. (See Porting.)
• Develop new tools to aide automated testing or improve existing ones.
• Provide feedback to the members of the Testing Workgroup directly by sending a message to @testing-workgroup on the Forums. The workgroup chair brings outstanding issues and topics to the workgroup to discuss during regular meetings. The workgroup decides the actions for the issues.
• Join the Testing Workgroup’s regular video meetings. Send a message to @testing-workgroup to request access, since calls must be kept to a relatively small number of participants.