# from Adam Kennedy
# on Tuesday 31 July 2007 11:51 pm:
>The recommended environment variable is $ENV{AUTOMATED_TESTING} or
>$ENV{PERL_AUTHOR_TESTING}.
Can we agree on that and document it as such? Did I miss the memo?
Does $ENV{PERL_AUTHOR_TESTING} imply a different set/level of testing
than $ENV{AUTOMATED_TESTING} ?
>CPAN Testers sets this $ENV{AUTOMATED_TESTING} to true when running.
So, would it be appropriate to have formal support for this is Build.PL?
That is,
AUTOMATED_TESTING => {
build_requires => \%will_get_merged_into_toplevel_build_requires,
},
PERL_AUTHOR_TESTING => {
# similarly?
},
Possibly, this also adds extra tests directories/types or etc.
>There's quite a few modules that do things like install SQLite and run
>extra tests if AUTOMATED_TESTING is true.
> From memory, I also do things like have the PPI fuzz testing run for
>100 times longer than for a user install. It's about 5 seconds for the
>user, but it runs for 5-10 minutes in automated testing.
Aside from "running longer" and "requiring more dependencies", is it
worth establishing formal guidelines for acquiring the data required to
e.g. login to a 3rd-party service (Yahoo::Marketing), probe some
hardware (Device::SerialPort), create a postgres database (Jifty::DBI,
and presumably other ORMs) and what-not? This would allow distributed
testers who have the appropriate resources (modem, account, database,
etc) to volunteer to run extra tests by setting the appropriate
environment variable and config-file parameters. It would also allow
advanced/ongoing end-users to more aggressively test the modules on
which they rely.
Currently, it seems that all of the above sorts of extra tests are
ad-hoc and require reading the README, *or* the pod, *or* `perl
Makefile.PL --help`, *or* just being "in the know" (i.e. a developer of
the code.)
--Eric
--
"...the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because
they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their
tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments."
--Neal Stephenson
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