> Then Ingy comes along with Inline::C. One of the tricks he pulled off at > YAPC::Europe was writing a simple Inline module which exposed all the > internal C functions as perl functions. AH HA! Now we can test C functions > just like any other Perl function. > > So, this is a request to place Inline::C into 5.9 to facilitate easy testing > of the C API.
IIRC, at last year's TPC, Ingy was against bringing Inline::C into the core. The idea (not sure if it's been implemented already) was to create a dummy Inline module, which would utilize the XS code generated by someone with Inline::C available, thus avoiding the need to ship with a full-blown Inline. This means that strictly speaking, Inline::C does not necessarily need to be in the core, to use it in testing internal C stuff. However, it would be required to develop and/or modify existing C tests, and that might be enough to justify its inclusion in the core. However, this particular method of testing C functions is particularly intriguing in that it allows you to maintain and utilize existing test harnesses, which is probably a big plus compared to redeveloping C versions. I'm thinking of stealing this idea for Parrot... :) Mike Lambert (A perl-qa lurker)
