Smoke Testing

What Does Smoke Testing Mean?

Smoke testing, in the context of software development, is a series of test cases that are run before the commencement of more rigorous tests. The goal of smoke testing is to verify that an application’s main features work properly. A smoke test suite can be automated or a combination of manual and automated testing.

Techopedia Explains Smoke Testing

Smoke testing is a preliminary test which is used to catch the high-level functional errors of an application. If the tests fail, then further testing of the application stops, and the build is refused for additional testing until the build passes the smoke test.

The term itself is derived from the electronic industry. While repairing a hardware component, if the equipment works with no smoke, the component is said to have passed the test.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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