On 7/1/06, Shlomi Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
One thing I'm wondering about is whether you are going to code all of this into TAP::Harness from scratch.
I believe I mentioned, I intend to steal lots of code from Test::Harness and Straps. "Steal" in the cut & paste sense. I have already adapted much of Straps->analyze_line as well as copied Point and Results wholesale. Folks might cringle at the cut & paste, but I do not TAP::Harness to have any dependencies upon Test::Harness.
Plus, I've also been planning similar things for Test::Run too, (and already started implementing to some extent)
I glanced at Test::Run today and had two initial observations. 1) Your licensing is possibly incompatible. You're using a mix of MIT X11, BSD and Artistic. I'm not familiar with the former two. I can't use anything not licensed Perl style. For one, it will not be able to enter the core. 2) I think your model does not perform a clean enough break with Test::Harness compared to what I'm planning. I realize this claim is vapor until I post the design. PS You might want to fix your copyright notices. I thank you for retaining our copyright for our portions of the code you took from Test::Harness but we do not have copyright over Test::Run::Obj, for example. IANAL so I don't know what should be there, but it probably shouldn't just be me and Andy.
I'd hate to see some duplicate effort.
Sometimes you have to make a clean break with the past. The code in Test::Harness was started almost 20 years ago. That's right, t/TEST in Perl 1 became Test::Harness. Its designed along procedural lines and we've been trying to slowly morph it into a more flexible model over the years and still haven't succeeded. Its not a large or complex module, it should not take this long. Further, I think the duplication is healthy. Part of the problem with Test::Harness is its the only game in town. Its the only thing which can parse TAP. Its very bad for a protocol to have only one implementation. The monolithic and inflexible nature of Test::Harness has held back Perl testing in the last few years. Having more than one TAP harness implementation will be healthy. I'm starting over. You're free to do whatever you want.
Please do not consider this email as an attack against your attempt to write code or fix what's broken with Test::Harness. I don't mind having some competition. However, I'm trying to see whether there is some way we can consolidate our efforts.
Licencing issues mentioned above prevent any code sharing, but I'll look at your lightning talk and see what ideas I can steal.
