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

Greetings, Monks!

I'm writing up the tests for a module I'm writing, and having noticed that I was writing the same thing over and over in different test files, I factored them out and put them into a .pm file in the t/ directory.

Now I've got error messages with ./Build test that I don't have with prove -I lib t/testname.t.

I'm confidant I can make the error messages go away, so don't worry about that. What I'd really like is a solid grounding in how the environment is different, so any pointers to good docs would be appreciated.

My questions are:

  1. Is that a good way to do this, or is there a better way to factor out common testing-only code?
  2. Is there anything about running in the test harness that I should watch out for?

UPDATE: Ah hah! I know why there are warnings under ./Build test and not under prove. While I had 'use warnings' on, I hadn't added the '-w' flag to prove. Running ./Build test runs the tests with the -w flag. Adding the '-w' flag to prove, makes it show the warnings just like ./Build test does. Apparently, I should have put 'use warnings' in a BEGIN block.

Yet Another UPDATE.. Okay, nix on the BEGIN block. Maybe $^W will do what I want...

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Tests in a module/package?
by gwadej (Chaplain) on Mar 11, 2009 at 20:15 UTC

    My normal approach for handling this case is to make a lib directory under t directory for test library code. I can then use FindBin to add that directory to any test files that need it. I'm not sure where I got this idea. (I'm pretty sure it's not mine.)

    This allows me to keep testing-specific utility code out of t/ but close by.

    G. Wade
[reply]
      Remember to write tests for the test library.

      Tests written using Test::Builder can easily be tested using Test::Builder::Tester. This is pretty good described in Perl Testing.

      --
      No matter how great and destructive your problems may seem now, remember, you've probably only seen the tip of them. [1]
[reply]
      Specifically, the usual idiom is to use FindBin with a "use lib" call, like this inside your *.t code: 
      use FindBin qw( $Bin );
use lib "$Bin/lib";
use My::Special::Purpose::Test::Code qw( :all );

      [download]
      This is the usual way to specify a module location relative to the script location.
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Re: Tests in a module/package?
by shmem (Chancellor) on Mar 11, 2009 at 22:11 UTC
    Apparently, I should have put 'use warnings' in a BEGIN block

    Well now. You know that warnings is lexically scoped? It would be confined to the BEGIN block, then.

[reply]

      Woah.. is there any way to turn on warnings for compile inside of a module?

[reply]

        Of course: 

        package Module;
use warnings;

        [download]

        ;-)

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