Clare Macrae

C++ Legacy Code Consultant

Clare is an independent consultant, helping teams work sustainably and efficiently to test and refactor legacy and hard-to-test code.

She has worked in software development for over 30 years, and in C++ and Qt for 20 years, and is now branching out to other languages.

Since 2017, Clare has used her spare time to work remotely with Llewellyn Falco on ApprovalTests.cpp, to radically simplify testing of legacy code. She has enjoyed this so much that in 2019 she set up Clare Macrae Consulting Ltd, to focus even more on helping others work with legacy code.

Before this, Clare was a Principal Scientific Software Engineer at Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. She is the original author of their popular C++ and Qt-based 3D crystal structure visualisation program Mercury.

How to use Approval Tests for C++ effectively

May 19, 2020

This talk will cover aspects such as:

Formatting options, to ensure failures are really easy to understand and act on
An example of when a growing number of unit tests turns out easier to maintain with Approvals
Different reporters, and how to use them well
Dealing with timestamps or dates (for example in logs)
Dealing with external resources: I/O, networking, system API calls, etc.
Dealing with multiple processes or threads
Can I use approvals for the cases when RAM is low? Eg. an embedded controller that has 1MB of RAM

C++ Testing Techniques, Tips and Tricks

Apr 09, 2020

An assortment of practical patterns and techniques to make it easier to write effective automated tests of C++ code, both old and new.

Clare will share some valuable techniques for easier handling of commonly troublesome testing scenarios. Whatever test framework you use, you will take away practical ideas to writer tests more easily and more effectively, to handle challenging automated test scenarios.

This talk is independent of test frameworks, and even covers a little for those creating Qt desktop applications.