Unit Tests for Postprocessors

[mark.lamneck]

I have a self written post processor and I'm using it with Fusion 360. At the moment it's working well but I'm thinking about what happens if there's an update of post.exe or Fusion CAM.

During the developement process, I've wrote a unit test. Therefore I have a directory with test cases which are basically intermediate files exported with the "Cnc Exporting PP" and a ncp file with the same name that has been running successfully on my machine. I also have a folder with the different machine configurations I'm using. Now for a test I'm iterating over all files and machineconfigs, create an output file with a local copy of post.exe and check the result against the accepted solution in the folder. If there are movement related differences, I'm recording an error. 

In my post postprocessor I'm writing a warning into the output file, if the version of post.exe is different to the one that have been tested with my pp. The idea is now, to run the described test with the version of post.exe which is currently used by Fusion360 if such a warning occurs. Now I have some questions:

1. What is the best way to locate the post.exe used by Fusion. Currently I'm iterating over the folders in \AppData\Local\Autodesk\webdeploy\production\ and find the newest version. Is there a more safe way to do it (I will ask this in a seperate thread as it might be interesting as individual question as well)? 

2. What if the format of the intermediate files will change with future versions? Can I detect that?

3. Do I have to check the CAM Version of Fusion 360 as well to detect a possilble incompatibility of my PP?

4. Are there already strategies to accomplish what I'm doing here?

Thanks in advance.