Too many tests for Windows command line?

simonm has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm working on an updated release of my Class::MakeMethods module and am unsure of how I can fix the errors reported by Win32 smoke testers:

NMAKE : fatal error U1095: expanded command line 'C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "-e" "test_harness(0, 'blib\lib', 'blib\arch')" t\attribute_stnd_hash.t t\autoload_stnd_hash.t (other test scripts...) t\utility_inheritable.t' too long Stop.

Ouch. It's true that this distribution includes a lot of test scripts, but of course Windows is the only platform to fail. The failing command line is a little over 2KB, so I suppose I'm running into the ShellExecute INTERNET_MAX_URL_LENGTH limit I found discussed here.

I had previously split the tests up into subdirectories but ran into a different set of Windows command-shell issues; I found a workaround that I hoped might fix this in this release (have a test that runs all the tests in a subdirectory) but I'm unsure if that works on Windows because it was masked by this other failure... Grr.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or workarounds to consider before I go off renaming the test scripts to have shorter filenames and/or merging them into fewer files? Will I be safe once I get the length of the command line down to a bit under 2KB or are there other limits to watch out for?

Comment on Too many tests for Windows command line?

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Re: Too many tests for Windows command line?
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 02, 2004 at 21:46 UTC

You could try globbing @ARGV in a begin block:

perl -e"BEGIN{ @ARGV=map glob, @ARGV }" -le"print for @ARGV" t\*.t
[download]

If the shell has already expanded the file arguments then the glob will have no effect, but on win32 it will expand it.

perl's glob will also expand wild cards in the paths so things like:

perl -le"BEGIN{ @ARGV= map glob, @ARGV}" -e"print for @ARGV" t/*/*.t
[download]

Become possible should you want to structure your test directory beyond one level.

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Re: Too many tests for Windows command line?
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Sep 03, 2004 at 05:17 UTC

what I suggested

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.