--- Kirrily Robert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Does anyone here understand "fixtures" as a testing concept, and could > they please explain it to me in a Perlish way? > > At least half of what I've heard described is what I usually achieve > with a t/data/ directory, and another half is what I'd do by writing a > specialized Test::Builder-based module.
A test fixture establishes a "known state" of a system. For example, when running with Test::Class, you can use "setup" and "teardown" methods which run before and after every test to load test data in a database, set up temp files, or do anything necessary to start a known, stable state and later do transaction rollbacks, clean up temp files and so on. One of the reasons randomizing test runs is important is because they can shake out bugs in the code when you have strange ordering dependencies, fail to clean up temp files, alter global state, etc. Test fixtures can make finding such code errors even more reliable because they guarantee (to the extent that they're not buggy) that every set of tests which runs has, if you will, the same starting point. Cheers, Ovid -- Buy the book -- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/ Perl and CGI -- http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/
