On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 12:32 -0700, Darren Duncan wrote: > Now a common factor to both of my proposals is that this Test.pm is > intentionally kept as simple as possible and contains just the > functionality needed to bootstrap the official Perl 6 test suite; if the > official test suite doesn't use certain features, then they don't exist in > this Test.pm, in general.
This doesn't quite address one assumed detail -- should the official test suite be modified to use as few (and as simple) Test.pm features as possible, so that Test.pm can then be made even simpler? This would likely make the test suite slightly clumsier in places, while making it easier for a new implementation to get enough functionality in place so that Test.pm is fully supported. > There would still be room for third party Test modules, as those would be > richer and provide functionality that would be useful for testing language > extensions / CPAN modules but that aren't needed by the tests for Perl 6 > itself. If the test suite is modified as above, then there pretty much HAVE to be additional Test modules -- people programming third-party code would go insane using only the anemic Test.pm that would be sufficient for a simplified test suite. Of course, that doesn't mean that a more extensive Test module can't be standardized, or even an official version written that all perl6's can ship with. It doesn't have to be all-encompassing, but a core set of "best practices" test tools, perhaps just taken from Perl 5 experience of the TDD folks and modified for Perl 6 differences, would be nice to rely on everywhere. -'f
