Randy Sims was kind enough to forward me Ovid's post to the Perl-QA list on this topic, here's my response:

Yes, I've been thinking about this for a long time. In fact, in the most recent M::B beta I made some steps toward it, by adding a 'retest' action that's just like 'test' except that it doesn't look in blib/, just in @INC. Functionally that actually covers a lot of the same ground you're after.

What I like about the 'retest' approach is that it's very easy and it's much more likely to work. It also makes it possible to run old tests against a new installation, or vice versa. What I don't like about it is that the user has to find the tarball again that they previously installed. I can imagine that in some situations that wouldn't be trivial. In other situations, when people can plan ahead, it's probably not a big deal.

I think there are some larger issues than 1,2,3 above that you might have missed, too:

4) Many distributions, including many of the most crucial and well-used ones, have some extra set-up steps in their build/install sequences. Others make assumptions in their test suites about where various files are located relative to the test code or relative to the current working directory. It's quite possible that in order for "installed" tests to work correctly it could take some serious coöperation by modules' authors.

5) Where should tests be installed? Where would any other supporting materials be installed?

For your #1 above, I'd say just perform a reinstall. For #2, maybe just punt - is there much of a need for that? For #3, I think we can work it into Module::Build as an action or flag(s) to the 'install' action. For EU::MM-based modules I'm not sure what the best approach would be, but probably I don't have to think about it. =)

-Ken

In reply to Re: Installing Tests by kwilliams
in thread Installing Tests by Ovid

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.