Automated Testing of Open-source Music Software with Opensound Control

Providing robust systems for live musical performance has been a difficult problem. Such systems are highly dynamic with lots of paths for execution; even small changes in input can lead to different results. Comprehensive testing is difficult, tedious and resource intensive, more so for opensource projects that often lack the resources to do such testing. We present a system for efficient automated testing of the Open Sound World (OSW) open-source music environment using OpenSound Control (OSC) messages sent from Python scripts. The automated testing system helped the developers to release a significantly more robust version of OSW in 2004, and is an important tool in the development of OSW 2.0. OSW supports VST and LADSPA plug-ins as is binary compatible with most Pd externals. Thus, the automated testing system in OSW can be used to test these external plug-ins as well.