I've been toying with this thought for a while: discourage (not quite deprecate) use_ok() and require_ok(). I've written up some of the problems with the former (http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/39859) and the latter still has the "or die" problem.
For the life of me, I can't really see any utility to use_ok() or require_ok(). Not only are both fragile and a source of strange "action at a distance" bugs, but the constructs they replace not only work correctly, but can be viewed as tests themselves! If either "use My::Module" or "require My::Module" fails, the test program exits with a non-zero exit status, thus meaning a failure is reported. What do people think? Should we start discouraging the use of these tests? Maybe even go so far as to deprecate them? The *only* use I've ever had for use_ok() has been in a t/00-load.t test which attempts to load all modules and does a BAIL_OUT if it fails. I'm sure there are other use cases, but if that's the only one, it seems a very, very slim justification for a fragile code. See my link for more explanation, including how Test::More's own docs get this wrong -- which alone should say something about how new testers will get this wrong when experienced testers do. Cheers, Ovid -- Buy the book - http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/ Tech blog - http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/ Twitter - http://twitter.com/OvidPerl Official Perl 6 Wiki - http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6
