[Top-posted]
Chad, thank you for the detailed response. I think I now understand
the scope of the problem and your solutions.
I think it makes sense to put this in the guts inside the construction
of a new context (or retrieval of current context) and in the release
of that context. Kent, am I right to believe this also addresses the
concerns you raised regarding testing of testing modules?
I'm sorry to say I'm quite ignorant [also] when it comes to the
testing underpinnings, so I'm not sure if there are additional
concerns this does not address, but otherwise it sounds very
reasonable to me.
Thanks again for taking the time to clarify in detail. :)
(It might be useful to start working on a document for the internals
for anyone who wants to hack on it. This should at least be in the
commit messages so it could be tracked down.)
S.
On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 11:26 PM, Chad Granum <exodi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, your understanding appears correct. And I can make it more clear.
>
> This is a very simple test tool in Test::Builder (the chrome):
>
>> my $TB = Test::Builder->new; # Call to internals/guts (singleton)
>>
>> sub ok($;$) {
>> my ($bool, $name) = @_;
>> $TB->ok($bool, $name); # Call to internals/guts
>> return $bool
>> }
>
>
> Here it is again using Test2 instead of Test::Builder (the chrome):
>
>> sub ok($;$) {
>> my ($bool, $name) = @_;
>> my $ctx = context(); # Call to internals/guts (A)
>> $ctx->ok($bool, $name); # another one (B)
>> $ctx->release; # another one (C)
>> return $bool;
>> }
>
>
> The lines marked with 'Call to internals/guts' kick off a series of things
> that read/write from filehandles, possibly opens them, evals code/catches
> exceptions, and any number of other things that can squash $! and $@. It
> should be noted that 'ok' is not the only method ever called on either
> Test::Builder or $ctx, this is just a very simple illustration.
>
> Now for starters, Test::Builder uses a singleton, so it can do all its
> initialization at load time, which allows it to leave several things
> unprotected. The singleton was bad, so Test2 does not use one, which means
> it has to be more protective of $! and $@ in more places to accomplish the
> same end goal.
>
> History, what Test::Builder does: It localizes $! and $@ in an eval wrapper
> called _try() that it uses to wrap things it expects could squash $! and $@.
> It also localizes $SIG{__DIE__} for various reasons. In some places where
> $SIG{__DIE__} should not be localized it will instead use local
> independently of _try(). There is also extra logic for subtests to ensure $?
> from the end of the subtest is carried-over into the regular testing outside
> of the subtest. Some places also need to be careful of $? because they run
> in an end block where squashing $? unintentionally is bad. (Yeah, $? is
> involved in all this as well, but much less so)
>
> This results in a lot of places where things are localized, and several
> places that run through an eval. People simply looking at the code may
> overlook these things, and not know that the protection is happening. The
> first time a new-dev will notice it is when tests start breaking because
> they added an open/close/eval/etc in the wrong place. Thanfully there are
> some tests for this, but not enough as I have found downstream things
> (PerlIO::via::Timeout as an example) that break when $! is squashed in a way
> Test::Builder never tests for.
>
> Test::Builder does not localize $! and $@ in all its public method.
> Realistically it cannot for 2 reasons:
>
> Performance hit
> Can mask real exceptions being thrown that are not caught by Test::Builder
> itself.
>
> In short, this is a significant maintenance burden, with insufficient
> testing, and no catch-all solution.
>
> ------------------
>
> Up until this email thread, Test2 was doing the same thing as Test::Builder.
> The problem is that Test2 does lots of other things differently for good
> reasons, unfortunately it provides a lot more opportunity to squash $! and
> $@. Like Test::Builder it is not reasonable to localize $! and $@ at every
> entry point.
>
> I decided to start this thread after a few downstream breakage was detected
> due to $! being squashed. One because perl changes $! when you clone a
> filehandle, even when no errors happen. Another because of a shared memory
> read that was added in an optional concurrency driver used by
> Test::SharedFork. I realized this would be an eternal whack-a-mole for all
> future maintainers of both projects, and one that is hard to write
> sufficient testing for.
>
> The solution:
> Go back to my second example. Notice there are 3 calls to the guts, marked
> (A), (B), and (C). (A) and (C) are universal to all Test2 based tools, and
> are also universally used in the Test::Builder dev releases when it calls
> out to Test2. No tool will function properly if it does not use both of
> those when it uses Test2. Calling context() should already always be done as
> soon as possible. the call to release() should be called as late as
> possible.
>
> I realized I could make the call to context() store $! and $@ in the $ctx
> object it returns. I could then also have release() restore them. This is
> similar to localizing except it bypasses the flaws:
>
> There is very little performance hit to this, in my 100k ok test, which
> takes just under 2 seconds on my machine, it added ~100ms. That is peanuts.
> There is more random variation in performance from run to run then the
> increase itself.
> It will not prevent $@/$! from being set by true uncaught exceptions, $ctx
> does not restore the vars when it si destroyed, so if an exception occurs
> release() is never called.
> It is a lot less magic than scattering random locals throughout the codebase
> It can be documented easily in one place
> It is easy to test and maintain
>
> -Chad
