Re: [Automake-NG] [PATCH 20/17] [ng] news: update w.r.t. recent changes in testsuite harnesses (TESTS based)

[Stefano Lattarini]

Hi Akim.

On 05/29/2012 07:23 PM, Akim Demaille wrote:
> 
> Le 23 mai 2012 à 11:34, Stefano Lattarini a écrit :
> 
>> +  This is not a big deal in practice, since as of today, all the real
>> +  world packages out there actually use 'test-driver' for most (if not
>> +  all) of their tests (the introduction of TAP support in mainstream
>> +  automake being too recent for those packages to have had time to phase
>> +  out their protocol-less tests, assuming they wanted to -- which is
>> +  usually not the case either).
> 
> Actually I don't even know what benefit there is from using
> this "standard"
>
To name just a few of them:

  - one test script can have several results (very useful to increase the
    granularity of tests, as Automake does with, e.g., 't/instspc.tap');

  - it allows to declare *conditional* expected failure (e.g., "this test
    failed, but we are on AIX, so that is not a regression");

  - there are sophisticated, independent runners for TAP-based tests (the
    'prove' utility being one of the most known and feature-rich);

  - there are feature-rich, mature perl modules that can generate TAP
    output ('Test::Simple' and 'Test::More' at least, plus a plethora
    of others);

  - TAP is used in the testsuite of most perl modules, of Perl itself,
    and also by Git (in the last couple of years at least); so it is
    here to stay (de-facto standard).


> (even though I google'd, and browsed the Automake documentation (btw, there
> is no index for TAP)).
> 

Regards,
  Stefano