On 1/21/07, David Golden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 1/21/07, demerphq <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Why cant something that wants to monitor the test process do something
> other than make test?
>
> They can do a make, and or make test-prep or whatever, and then call
> into an alternative test harness framework to monitor the tests.
>
> Can you explain why this is a no-go in more detail?
I can undestand your thinking, but I think this is a no-go because of
the legacy of Makefile.PL, Build.PL and test.pl and the ability for
them to change what "make test" or "Build test" actually does.
Your suggestion about "alternative test harness frameworks" will
probably work 99% of the time. But it's not entirely backwards
compatible. And as long as people can continue to customize
make/Build, it introduces yet another variation in how modules might
be run. I think we want to avoid the case where an alternative
framework might fail tests, but the author's "make test" works fine,
or the case where the alternative test framework passes, but CPAN.pm's
"make test" fails.
The only think that distributions can be safely assumed to do is
execute "make test" or "Build test" because that's exactly how CPAN.pm
runs tests and interprets output. So in my opinion, that's *exactly*
what the test monitors should be checking, not the results of calling
an alternative framework on the "t/" directory.
I think having distros that want to push the envelope that far should
have to somehow inform the harness of such. I see no reason of making
everybody pay for a few people bending the rules.
Yves
--
perl -Mre=debug -e "/just|another|perl|hacker/"
