hi all.
yesterday on irc we got to discussing adding a feature to Test::More that
Apache-Test has been using for a while. the overall opinion was that the
idea had merit, but we should vet out options here, so comments welcome.
here's the scoop...
over in Apache-Test we allow users to join the plan and skip operations in a
single step. so, whereas in Test::More you would do something like
if ($condition) {
plan tests => 3;
}
else {
plan 'skip_all';
}
Apache-Test allows a simple
plan tests => 3, $condition;
basically, if the arguments to plan() are unbalanced, the final argument is
taken as a skip marker. of course, that's not the whole story, since I just
glossed over the skip message, but that's the basic idea we're tossing
around. here are the gory details.
Apache-Test provides a few different interfaces for $condition, but the
format for each is to populate a @global with the skip message. here's an
example:
plan tests => 3, need_lwp; # skip if the LWP suite is not found.
where need_lwp would populate the global skip array behind the scenes, and
the message would be printed as you would expect. for user-specific
functions there is skip_message()
plan tests => 3, skip_message('foo not found');
a final, interesting form is the special need() function, which will push
skip messages onto this global array and print them all
# skip unless we can do SSL in real time
plan tests => 3, need need_lwp, need_module('LWP::Protocol::https');
in this case, if only LWP::Protocol::https was missing the skip message
would be just for it, while if both were missing both skip messages would be
printed.
anyway, the point of this exercise is to present a few different options for
augmenting Test::More's plan(). personally, I really, really like the way
Apache::Test::plan() works, and would love to see that logic carried over to
Test::More. the only real sticking issue is the use of a global array,
which doesn't really fly with Test::Builder.
so, were I to implement it now (off the top of my head) I would port plan(),
skip_message(), and need() over to Test::Builder. the communication would
use a new function Test::Builder::add_to_skip_message() (or somesuch) that
would be the official accessor to some locally scoped message array.
ok, now tear it to shreds :)
--Geoff
