The plan line has to be mandatory for this feature to work as intended (i.e., for the TAP consumer to determine whether a producer has run to completion or not). An optional plan would be useless.
Sorry to be such a pest. Your statement that "... determine whether a producer has run to completion or not" is puzzling. The TAP Standard specifically states that if the test plan is 1..N and the number of test lines are k < N, then the k+1 .. N missing test lines are to be considered as skipped. If this is your standards conforming implementation then correct test completion is seen when either N test lines are detected or an end of file is seen. So your statement is confusing. Are you saying that the Automake TAP implementation is non-conforming? There is one issue not addressed in the TAP Standard and not addressed in the Automake Manual. What happens if k > N? From your statement I would assume that the TAP Automake implementation gives up and goes home, perhaps with a diagnostic message (sorry, I just haven't checked this out yet so I really don't know). But if the TAP implementation just gives up then trailing Diagnostic lines are not read which violates the TAP Standard. If I sound confused and look ugly I am. One the state of mind, the other the state of being. art