Adam Kennedy wrote: > For background on this email, see the following entry in my journal. > > http://use.perl.org/~Alias/journal/33893 > > Lately, I've noticed a series of modules that are cargo-culting the use > of test_pod and test_pod_coverage in their tests. > > Not only are we seeing spurious failures for users, but worse some > authors are putting Test::Pod and Test::Pod::Coverage as dependencies, > and in extreme cases, Perl::Critic as well. > > Now, one argument is that it's the author's fault for not appropriately > skipping these tests if the Test::Pod module is not available. > > However, in most of these cases the author would not have made these > errors AT ALL if not for the fact that Kwalitee says they should have > these tests. > > The CPANTS Game just makes this pressure worse, by making it competive. > > That said, I do see the value of these tests EXISTING in the > distribution, as their provide a guarentee that any new maintainers for > the modules will continue to comply with the principles those tests > implement. > > BUT for most of these tests, it is BAD that the end-user EVER run them. > > Thus, I would like to propose the following. > > 1. That the running of POD-related tests by end users is considered > harmful.
I can never agree with this. A failing pod test is the first sign pod2* generation is broken. It's rare, but I've been in the situation where for some reason (mistmatching dist requirements, failed upgrades, bad dist packages, broken troff, etc) the creation of man pages/html from the dist pod fails outright. Pod tests assure the user that they will be able to perldoc/man the thing they are installing. That's doubly true if you're using pod2usage to expose help in scripts. Should they be run automatically, all the time? Maybe. Maybe not. Should they skip if the test modules aren't installed? Absolutely. Should they require the Test* modules in prereq? OF course not. But I don't think saying pod tests are something the end user should never run is wrong. Then again, I'm never on the popular side of these discussions. Personally, part of me wants to say: stop worrying about what tests I decide to ship and enable with my dists. -=Chris
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