----- Original Message ---- From: Ken Williams > Yes, I've been thinking about this for a long time. In fact, in the > most recent M::B beta I made some steps toward it, by adding a > 'retest' action that's just like 'test' except that it doesn't look > in blib/, just in @INC. Functionally that actually covers a lot of > the same ground you're after.
Sweet! > 4) Many distributions, including many of the most crucial and well- > used ones, have some extra set-up steps in their build/install > sequences. Others make assumptions in their test suites about where > various files are located relative to the test code or relative to > the current working directory. It's quite possible that in order for > "installed" tests to work correctly it could take some serious > coöperation by modules' authors. In that case, ./Build install could be this (or something similar): ./Build install --with-tests Then, after the module is installed, the installed tests are run against the installed version and if there's a failure, the user could be given the option to uninstall them. > 5) Where should tests be installed? Where would any other > supporting materials be installed? Don't ask me :) > >> 1. How does one install tests for modules already installed? > For your #1 above, I'd say just perform a reinstall. This is often very difficult in a corporate environment, but that's the environment for which installed tests might be the most useful. > >> 2. If you install a module with already failing tests, you need > >> to track what the failures are so you can note different failures > For #2, maybe > just punt - is there much of a need for that? Yes! Handling this correctly is critical to its success. Consider that I install Foo::Bar and tests 4 and 8 fail. Subsequent runs should either skip those tests suites entirely, mark 4 and 8 as 'TODO' or have some other method of ensuring that running the full installed test suite doesn't report a bunch of failures. If it does report a bunch of failures, developers are going to learn to ignore failures and that makes the entire project useless. Cheers, Ovid -- Buy the book -- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/ Perl and CGI -- http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/
