What are fixtures in Test Bench?

question 2 connections

Audience member (a Rails developer) asks Ladd to clarify what 'fixture' means in Test Bench, since it collides with Rails Active Record fixtures. Ladd traces the term to a 1989 Kent Beck xUnit-in-Smalltalk writeup where a fixture was a behavioral 'device for testing something', not data. He concedes Rails' YAML-file-loading meaning is an unfortunate collision and invites better names. Uses the light-fixture metaphor: a Test Bench fixture is a class that powers and holds the thing under test — an object that can exercise other objects.

answer_summary

A Test Bench fixture is a plain class that includes TestBench::Fixture and exercises another object. The term comes from Kent Beck's 1989 Smalltalk xUnit writeup (a behavioral testing device), not from Rails YAML fixtures — the name collision is acknowledged but unavoidable.