Re: [Perlunit-devel] TestSuite inheritance and runner state

[Adam S. <ad...@sp...>]

Matthew Astley (mc...@us...) wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 08:59:50PM +0100, Adam Spiers wrote:
> > Any thoughts on my proposed redesign of TestSuites?  In case you
> > missed it, it was posted on March 7th, subject "TestSuite inheritance
> > and runner state"
> >
> > I proposed that we ditch this
> > 
> >   package My::TestSuites::Foo;
> > 
> >   sub suite {
> >     my $class = shift;
> > 
> >     my $suite = Test::Unit::TestSuite->empty_new('name of suite');
> > 
> >     use My::TestSuites::Bar;
> >     $suite->add_test(My::TestSuites::Bar->suite());
> > 
> >     use My::TestSuites::Baz;
> >     $suite->add_test(My::TestSuites::Baz->suite());
> > 
> >     return $suite;
> >   }
> > 
> > in favour of
> > 
> >   package My::TestSuites::Foo;
> >   use base qw(Test::Unit::TestSuite);
> > 
> >   sub name { 'name of suite' }
> >   sub subsuites { qw(My::TestSuites::Bar My::TestSuites::Baz) }
> > 
> > which is a hell of a lot easier to read, write, and implement the
> > framework for.  It also means that My::TestSuites::Bar really ISA
> > TestSuite.  It never used to be, which seems rather ridiculous.
> 
> You're right, it's much better. Except, can we keep either the suite()
> method or have a call to new() instead please? I do some stuff at
> suite creation time. I could do it before starting the tests, but not
> if the tests are started with the (Tk)?TestRunner.pl provided with
> Perlunit.

Couldn't you do it by overriding new() in your suite?

> Test::Unit::Suite instead of Test::Unit::TestSuite would make a lot of
> sense, and shouldn't break too much stuff since it only occurs at the
> top-ish levels.
> 
> Presumably there'd be defaults
>  T:U::Suite::name { return ref(shift()) }
>  T:U::Suite::subsuites { () }
> ?

Yes.

> Maybe we should have a client-side changelog? Listing things you'll
> need to do to your test code when you upgrade to the next release.
> Seems like a lot of effort though.

Aye, losing backwards compatibility is a concern here.  Maybe we can
keep it with something like

  if ($classname->can('suite')) {
    ...
  }
  elsif ($classname->can('new')) {
    ...
  }
  else {
    die "uhoh";
  }

Without thinking about it too carefully, this default might be
sensible too:

  T::U::Suite::suite { $_[0] }

Sounds OK?