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Exercise 009: Remove Dead Steps

🔗 Related Smell: 009 - Dead Steps

Purpose

  • Learn to identify the Dead Steps smell.
  • Learn how to search for dead steps and why it's important to remove them asap instead.

Your Task

Within the step implementation there are 3 steps that are not used by the Customer.featurefile. Find and delete them.

Solution

Hint A
  • After solving some exercises and understanding the business, you have maybe an idea which steps are unused.
  • Review the Customer.featurefile and then scroll through the step implementation, do you find it?
Hint B
  • Two steps are empty at all, that means they provide no functionality.
  • The third step implements the negation of finding a customer.
Hint C
  • The relevant steps are
    • Given no customers exist
    • When the customer Rose Smith is searched
    • Then the customer can not be found
  • Brainstorm why this steps are not used anymore
Step by Step Walkthrough
  • The relevant steps are
    • Given no customers exist
    • When the customer Rose Smith is searched
    • Then the customer can not be found
  • Possible explainations:
    • The step was copied and renamed
    • Somebody didn't find a step and created a similar one
    • It was replaced with parameters or the input data in the scenario was changed
    • Gold plating: implement a step for the future even if currently not used
  • Remove the implementation from the step definition file.

🔗 GitHub Commit

The reqnroll extensions of MS Visual Studio provides a popup menue Find unused Step Definitions. That's the easiest way to solve this smell.

🔗 GitHub Commit