On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 07:56:32PM -0800, Dave Whipp wrote: > "Andrew Wilson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote >> Perl's tests are built on Test::More, it uses ok() and is() not >> assert(). If we're going to be doing test cases for perl 6 then we >> should do them using perl's standard testing format (i.e. Test::More, >> Test::Harness, etc.) > > I would argue that we should write our tests using perl6's standard > format -- and we need to define that format. There may be a good > argument for using the perl5 standards; but we should explore the > alternatives. "assert" is a generally accepted term: I'm not sure > why perl should be different.
You could argue that, but I would say that perl 6 already has someone
responsible for making sure it gets tested properly. As far as I know,
when Mike wrote Test::More and redesigned Test::Harness he had perl 6 in
mind.
There is already a list for people interested in testing perl6. perl-qa
is perl 6's testing list. Mike asked them not to put the 6 in the name
because he wanted to raise standards of testing in perl 5 and thought a
6 would put people off. If there is a case for replacing the testing
mechanism then you probably need to argue it on perl-qa.
>> If your program can't do basic I/O it's probably pretty broken. Even
>> if we we're to only rely on the test modules, they also need to be
>> able to communicate with the outside world.
>
> My day-job is ASIC verification: in a previous job I tested
> microprocessor cores. We generally found mechanisms to communicate
> pass/fail without requiring any IO capability. A common method is to
> use the programm counter -- if we execute the instruction at address
> 0x123456, then exit as a PASS; if we reach 0x654321, then fail. (we
> used the assembler to get the addresses of specific pass/fail labels).
Ok, I concede you don't need print to do this stuff. Standard perl
tests (perl 5 current practice) generally don't use print anyway, they
would do
use Test::More Tests => 1;
my $a = some_function('foo');
is($a, 5, "some_function frobnitzes foo correctly");
or:
use Test::More Tests => 1;
is(some_function('foo''), 5, "some_function frobnitzes foo correctly");
which may have been what you wanted to rename as assert.
> We don't need to go to these extremes for perl testing, because we
> have an exit(int) capability. exit(0) means pass: anything else
> (including timeout) is a fail.
>
> The fact that we don't need C<print> is not a good argument for not
> using it. Perl tests should assume that Parrot works!
Was the test you quoted a parrot test? If it is it probably needs to be
lower level and can't use the full gamut of the Testing suite.
There's a case to be made for defining a documentation format that test
cases can be defined in and extracted from. I think though that we need
to be aware that work on perl 6 testing has already been done and make
sure the stuff we produce is useful. There's little point in producing
tests in the wrong format.
andrew
--
Libra: (Sept. 23 - Oct. 23)
You will have one of the worst days of your life next week. However,
since it's one of several thousand worst days of your life, it's not all
that significant.
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