Re: [Simpletest-support] SimpleTest changes for 2012

[Perrick Penet-A. <pe...@no...>]

Hi,

Here's my take on the current "Unit Testing world in PHP". As far as I 
can see, there have been 2 tools in the market for a long time, and a 
new one is coming...

1/ PHPUnit is of course the "main gorilla" and it claims to be the "the 
de-facto standard for unit testing in PHP projects". Its requirements 
are PHP 5.2.7 or later but PHP 5.3.8 (or later) is highly recommended. 
It has been following new PHP versions quite closely and tends to drop 
old versions as fast as it can. And it uses its own CLI tool (aka 
"phpunit").

2/ SimpleTest has been the challenger for quite some time. It introduced 
web testing and mock objects to the PHP world. It's focus has always 
been more on BC issues : we covered both PHP4 and PHP5 for a long time, 
and I think we'll carry on with such goal for the forseable feature 
(strechting as far back as possible).

3/ atoum is a new containder coming up in the French community. It 
PHP5.3+ only and can therefore be even more dynamic. It will be 
interesting to see if that project can get some traction, and more 
importantly how it will cope with newer versions of PHP (ie. staying 
close to PHP new releases as PHPUnit or trying to cover as many PHP 
versions as possible just like SimpleTest).
You can find out more about it here : https://github.com/mageekguy/atoum

Now back to your question : should I stay with SimpleTest or should I 
lean towards PHPUnit and create a gateway ?

A the new release master, I (and my own company) will continue 
supporting SimpleTest for the foreseeable future for a very good reason 
: our own app has more than 16000 tests passing at least twice a day and 
I don't plan on making the switch ;-) And I feel that a tool as vital 
and low-level as a unit tester should cover as many PHP versions as 
possible...

Yours,
	Perrick

PS : there used to be a gateway from PHPUnit to SimpleTest. And it was 
the main reason whey they have "assertEquals" and why we have 
"assertEqual" ;-)



On 11/01/12 18:55, Manuel Vacelet wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Happy to see some news from the "heads" of SimpleTest.
> I think we are a couple of project strongly relying on SimpleTest for our
> everyday work (at least in Tuleap we are).
> My question is: do you think it make sense to consider a gateway from
> SimpleTest to PhpUnit ?
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Perrick Penet-Avez
> <pe...@no...>wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> SimpleTest once was a leading tool for unit testing in PHP : thanks to
>> Marcus Baker, we were to first to user Mock objects in particular.
>>
>> Unfortunately the project has somehow lost its momentum lately. But with
>> quite a handful of projects still relying on it, SimpleTest is still a
>> good tool for what it does...
>>
>> As project co-leader, I asked Marcus if we could make some changes to
>> its governance. Here's what we've agreed on so far :
>>
>> 1/ We'll mark SimpleTest as "in maintenance mode". It's been that way
>> for the last two years, it's only going to be more transparent for new
>> users. For example, Beth Tucker Long talked about SimpleTest in her PHP
>> Advent 2011 post :
>>
>> http://phpadvent.org/2011/dont-forget-the-front-by-beth-tucker-long
>>
>> We still have active users !
>>
>> 2/ The project will continue focusing on bug-fixes mainly for the time
>> being. So if you have any, please carry on adding them to the bugs&
>> patches trackers, there are still monitored.
>>
>> 3/ I'll try to make sure SimpleTest is future-proof. I'll try to push
>> new versions in synch with PHP's own release plans.
>>
>> The first task in my own TODO list is revamping the /packages in the SVN
>> source. I did some clean-up there ! If you had some important files in
>> that directory, you may want to check there's still working.
>>
>> I wish all of you a very happy new year. And hopefully we can all carry
>> on the great work Marcus Baker has done for us over the years !
>>
>> Yours,
>>         Perrick
>>
>> PS : if you have any other things on you wishlist, now is a great time !
>>
>>
>>
>>
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