On 3/7/07, Andy Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ovid's post about TAP::Tests has reminded me: would it be useful to
have a TAP statement that conveys the exit code of a test script? At
the moment in a hypothetical situation where there's some distance
between the harness and the test script - like perhaps they're on
different machines - the test script's exit status has to be sent out-
of-band. If you add
exit <n>
to the grammar then the TAP transcript becomes a complete log of the
test.
Exit code or Status code? In a distributed environment one often wants
a bit more than the information that an Exit code provides depending
one what's driving the test. I'm not sure what might be best, but it
would be worth considering something like HTTP::Status, RFC 2616 and
RFC 2518.
I'm working on a distributed functional testing system where the
individual tests are distributed, not an entire script. Here it is
necessary to know the difference between a
Command not found vs a failure, a successful create test vs the later
successful pass in order to provide useful diagnostics.
The RFC Status codes might not be a perfect fit for test status, but
like the SIP protocol, they can be reworked to something compatible
and generally recognizable. Everyone knows that a 404 is bad.
Regards,
--
Eric Hacker, CISSP
aptronym (AP-troh-NIM) noun
A name that is especially suited to the profession of its owner
I _can_ leave well enough alone, but my criteria for well enough is
pretty darn high.
