Property Testing Libraries Comparison
Besides QuickCheck, there are two other property testing libraries in the Purescript ecosystem:
- StrongCheck and its corresponding StrongCheck-Laws package
- Jack (no longer compiles since the
0.12.0release)
Here's a comparison table between the three:
| Feature | QuickCheck | StrongCheck | Jack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equivalent Haskell Library | QuickCheck | QuickCheck | Hedgehog |
| Uses Arbitrary | Yes | Yes | No |
| Type of Shrinking | Type-Directed | Type-Directed | Integrated |
| Supports "exhaustive" testing | No | Yes | No |
| Supports "statistical" testing | No | Yes | No |
| Can generate functions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Supports monadic tests | Yes | Yes | No |
According to @garyb, one of the core contributors to Purescript:
Originally StrongCheck (SC) was fully stack safe where there were some cases that QuickCheck (QC) was not, but QC is now too. I wouldn't use SC now unless I needed
smallCheck(exhaustive testing) orstatCheck(statistical testing) as it is significantly slower, to the point of it being annoying on some tests
Consider also reading through QuickCheck, Hedgehog, and Validity, an article on Haskell's different testing libraries.
Lastly, QuickCheck's Gen type and combinators are used in Benchotron, the Purescript benchmarking library (covered next)