Re: [wxperl-users] wxPerl testing framework, TAPx harness

[Bradley K. E. <Bra...@Do...>]

Eric Wilhelm wrote:
> # from Bradley K. Embree
> # on Monday 12 February 2007 08:37 pm:
> 
>> Mike Schroeder wrote:
>>> Eric Wilhelm wrote:
>>>> BTW, the TAPx project would love to have a wxPerl gui test harness
>>>> example.  There's something that could be used by many perl
>>>> programmers, even programmers of other languages, and has a small,
>>>> but non-trivial issue of IPC with running children in a fork.  IMO,
>>>> it would also be a great place to apply a Wx::TreeListCtrl widget.
>>> Oh -- we've had another contractor (Brad Embree) working the past
>>> few months on a test harness for wxPerl.  At this point it assumes
>> I am actually in the process of finishing the test harness up, and
>> integrating it back into our main trunk for some final testing.
> 
> That sounds really neat, but we need a jargon clarification:
> 
>   TAP Harness - thing that runs tests and aggregates results
> 
>   TAP producer - Testing framework (e.g. Test::More)
> 
> So, if you're code prints "ok", "not ok" and involves .t files run under 
> "make test", then it is a testing framework (TAP producer.)  If it is 
> actually a harness, that makes it difficult to run within a harness.
> 
> A harness (e.g. `prove` or `runtests`) simply takes a list of files to 
> test and executes each one, reporting on what passed/failed and giving 
> a summary at the end.
> 
> What the TAPx project would like is a wxPerl test harness (i.e. wxprove) 
> which runs your tests (be they gui tests or not) and shows which ones 
> passed or failed.
> 
> Yes, we want and need a wxPerl test framework too.  :-D  However, the 
> widespread and cross-language usefulness of which I wrote only applies 
> to a harness.
> 
> --Eric

Agreed, and I think the "playback" of a recorded test session could be 
made to emit TAP as it plays back the events. I imagine with a little 
more work we could have playback fire up the app, and run through the 
events emitting TAP as it goes.

I've looked at TAPx a little bit, but the last time I played with it I 
was bitten by some problems it had on windows. I believe those problems 
have since been ironed out, and I have been meaning to take another look.

Brad