Re: [Tcllib-devel] Writing tests - how?

[Lars H. <Lar...@re...>]

Andreas Kupries skrev:
>> What is currently available /may/ of course be interpreted as "well,
>> just copy and modify pop3.test". I suppose this will work (many have
>> probably done that) but already the first commmand
> 
>> source [file join \
>>   	[file dirname [file dirname [file join [pwd] [info script]]]] \
>>   	devtools testutilities.tcl]
> 
>> there is enough to make me shun away. Surely there should be a better
>> way to do this?
> 
> As far as I know, no. This is the standard command to load the common
> support code for testsuites in Tcllib. It uses the location of the .test
> file to compute the location of the support code and the sourcing it. We
> cannot avoid its replication across all testsuites. Stuffing it into a
> procedure in the support code will not work, because then you will need the
> support code itself to make the support code available. And I do not have
> any other ideas. If you have some feel free to tell me.

Well, what about a small helper package? One could make the above

package require tcllib::testutilities
tcllib::testutilities::init

or something like that. The separate [tcllib::testutilities::init] call 
would be needed to retrieve the [info script] data, although now that I 
think about it, one could (if really devious) embed such a call into 
the [package ifneeded] script as well. An explicit call does however 
have the advantage that one can, if necessary, customise the 
initialisation (no, I don't have a clear use-case for that right now; 
maybe too tired).

What is gained by [package require tcllib::testutilities] is primarily 
that one avoids hardcoding paths (relative paths, yes, but still 
hardcoded paths) into the test files.

Lars Hellström