I suppose we're referring to different kinds of testing. Manual QA, etc, on prod sure.
But if you're building client software artifacts, to unit test or integration test involves building different software in a different configuration, with different software and running it in a test harness. To facilitate unit testing or integration testing client software you:
- Build with a lower optimization level (-O0 usually) so that the generated code bares even a passing resemblance to what you actually wrote and your debugger can follow along.
- Generate debug info.
- Avoid stripping symbols.
- Enable logging.
- Build and link your tests code into a library artifact.
- Run it in a test harness.
That's not testing what you ship. It's testing something pretty close, obviously, but does not bear any semblance to a deterministic build.
But if you're building client software artifacts, to unit test or integration test involves building different software in a different configuration, with different software and running it in a test harness. To facilitate unit testing or integration testing client software you:
- Build with a lower optimization level (-O0 usually) so that the generated code bares even a passing resemblance to what you actually wrote and your debugger can follow along.
- Generate debug info.
- Avoid stripping symbols.
- Enable logging.
- Build and link your tests code into a library artifact.
- Run it in a test harness.
That's not testing what you ship. It's testing something pretty close, obviously, but does not bear any semblance to a deterministic build.