As I've been developing CPAN::Reporter, I've been thinking about what information I wished I had when examining failure reports on CPAN Testers. Test::Reporter already includes the results of "perl -V". As part of CPAN::Reporter, I include a list of prerequisites specified and the module versions loaded (and I believe that CPANPLUS does this as well).

Now I'm considering what else might be useful. From an initial small list I had, I've brainstormed a longer list of additional things that might be useful to include. For example:

Toolchain module versions

It seemed like it might be useful to know what versions of the module toolchain are in use. These aren't listed in prerequisites and could be a potential source of test problems (particularly false negatives).

• CPAN
• CPANPLUS -- though not really relevant for CPAN::Reporter
• ExtUtils::MakeMaker
• Module::Build, along with ExtUtils::CBuilder and ExtUtils::ParseXS

Environment variables

Many test programs change behavior based on environment variables. In addition, it seemed to me that some environment variables might answer other questions about the operating environment at the time of the failure.

• qr/PERL/ -- anything specific to Perl and kind enough to flag it in the name of the variable
• PATH
• SHELL
• TERM
• AUTOMATED_TESTING -- used by many authors to toggle tests for non-interactive situations
• AUTHOR_TESTING -- I use this for pod/coverage tests, though I probably should have called it PERL_AUTHOR_TESTING
• INCLUDE -- win32 gcc path to header files
• LIB -- win32 gcc path to library files
• LD_LIBRARY_PATH -- GNU/linux path to library files

Other stuff

This is more of a catch-all, but it seemed like many of these might be useful to know when investigating a test failure report.

• perl executable name -- $^X -- helpful for detecting spaces/non-standard locations
• UID/EUID and GID/EGID -- $<, $>, $(, $) -- running as root or as a normal user?
• umask -- affects files created during tests
• Win32::GetOSVersion() -- only for win32, of course, but would give more detail than just "MSWin32" from $^O (e.g. Win98? Vista?)

Program versions

This is a much more speculative idea, as there is no standard way to ask for a version for an external program. It might or might not really matter except in very unusual XS cases.

• compiler
• $Config{make}

Feedback needed

I'm interested in what people think of these lists. Which of these seem useful? Which are overkill? Are there things missing that you'd really like to have in a test report. Which would you prioritize?

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.