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+=head1 NAME
+
+Test::Harness::Beyond - Beyond make test
+
+=head1 Beyond make test
+
+Test::Harness is responsible for running test scripts, analysing
+their output and reporting success or failure. When I type
+F<make test> (or F<./Build test>) for a module, Test::Harness is usually
+used to run the tests (not all modules use Test::Harness but the
+majority do).
+
+To start exploring some of the features of Test::Harness I need to
+switch from F<make test> to the F<prove> command (which ships with
+Test::Harness). For the following examples I'll also need a recent
+version of Test::Harness installed; 3.14 is current as I write.
+
+For the examples I'm going to assume that we're working with a
+'normal' Perl module distribution. Specifically I'll assume that
+typing F<make> or F<./Build> causes the built, ready-to-install module
+code to be available below ./blib/lib and ./blib/arch and that
+there's a directory called 't' that contains our tests. Test::Harness
+isn't hardwired to that configuration but it saves me from explaining
+which files live where for each example.
+
+Back to F<prove>; like F<make test> it runs a test suite - but it
+provides far more control over which tests are executed, in what
+order and how their results are reported. Typically F<make test>
+runs all the test scripts below the 't' directory. To do the same
+thing with prove I type:
+
+ prove -rb t
+
+The switches here are -r to recurse into any directories below 't'
+and -b which adds ./blib/lib and ./blib/arch to Perl's include path
+so that the tests can find the code they will be testing. If I'm
+testing a module of which an earlier version is already installed
+I need to be careful about the include path to make sure I'm not
+running my tests against the installed version rather than the new
+one that I'm working on.
+
+Unlike F<make test>, typing F<prove> doesn't automatically rebuild
+my module. If I forget to make before prove I will be testing against
+older versions of those files - which inevitably leads to confusion.
+I either get into the habit of typing
+
+ make && prove -rb t
+
+or - if I have no XS code that needs to be built I use the modules
+below F<lib> instead
+
+ prove -Ilib -r t
+
+So far I've shown you nothing that F<make test> doesn't do. Let's
+fix that.
+
+=head2 Saved State
+
+If I have failing tests in a test suite that consists of more than
+a handful of scripts and takes more than a few seconds to run it
+rapidly becomes tedious to run the whole test suite repeatedly as
+I track down the problems.
+
+I can tell prove just to run the tests that are failing like this:
+
+ prove -b t/this_fails.t t/so_does_this.t
+
+That speeds things up but I have to make a note of which tests are
+failing and make sure that I run those tests. Instead I can use
+prove's --state switch and have it keep track of failing tests for
+me. First I do a complete run of the test suite and tell prove to
+save the results:
+
+ prove -rb --state=save t
+
+That stores a machine readable summary of the test run in a file
+called '.prove' in the current directory. If I have failures I can
+then run just the failing scripts like this:
+
+ prove -b --state=failed
+
+I can also tell prove to save the results again so that it updates
+its idea of which tests failed:
+
+ prove -b --state=failed,save
+
+As soon as one of my failing tests passes it will be removed from
+the list of failed tests. Eventually I fix them all and prove can
+find no failing tests to run:
+
+ Files=0, Tests=0, 0 wallclock secs ( 0.00 usr + 0.00 sys = 0.00 CPU)
+ Result: NOTESTS
+
+As I work on a particular part of my module it's most likely that
+the tests that cover that code will fail. I'd like to run the whole
+test suite but have it prioritize these 'hot' tests. I can tell
+prove to do this:
+
+ prove -rb --state=hot,save t
+
+All the tests will run but those that failed most recently will be
+run first. If no tests have failed since I started saving state all
+tests will run in their normal order. This combines full test
+coverage with early notification of failures.
+
+The --state switch supports a number of options; for example to run
+failed tests first followed by all remaining tests ordered by the
+timestamps of the test scripts - and save the results - I can use
+
+ prove -rb --state=failed,new,save t
+
+See the prove documentation (type prove --man) for the full list
+of state options.
+
+When I tell prove to save state it writes a file called '.prove'
+('_prove' on Windows) in the current directory. It's a YAML document
+so it's quite easy to write tools of your own that work on the saved
+test state - but the format isn't officially documented so it might
+change without (much) warning in the future.
+
+=head2 Parallel Testing
+
+If my tests take too long to run I may be able to speed them up by
+running multiple test scripts in parallel. This is particularly
+effective if the tests are I/O bound or if I have multiple CPU
+cores. I tell prove to run my tests in parallel like this:
+
+ prove -rb -j 9 t
+
+The -j switch enables parallel testing; the number that follows it
+is the maximum number of tests to run in parallel. Sometimes tests
+that pass when run sequentially will fail when run in parallel. For
+example if two different test scripts use the same temporary file
+or attempt to listen on the same socket I'll have problems running
+them in parallel. If I see unexpected failures I need to check my
+tests to work out which of them are trampling on the same resource
+and rename temporary files or add locks as appropriate.
+
+To get the most performance benefit I want to have the test scripts
+that take the longest to run start first - otherwise I'll be waiting
+for the one test that takes nearly a minute to complete after all
+the others are done. I can use the --state switch to run the tests
+in slowest to fastest order:
+
+ prove -rb -j 9 --state=slow,save t
+
+=head2 Non-Perl Tests
+
+The Test Anything Protocol (http://testanything.org/) isn't just
+for Perl. Just about any language can be used to write tests that
+output TAP. There are TAP based testing libraries for C, C++, PHP,
+Python and many others. If I can't find a TAP library for my language
+of choice it's easy to generate valid TAP. It looks like this:
+
+ 1..3
+ ok 1 - init OK
+ ok 2 - opened file
+ not ok 3 - appended to file
+
+The first line is the plan - it specifies the number of tests I'm
+going to run so that it's easy to check that the test script didn't
+exit before running all the expected tests. The following lines are
+the test results - 'ok' for pass, 'not ok' for fail. Each test has
+a number and, optionally, a description. And that's it. Any language
+that can produce output like that on STDOUT can be used to write
+tests.
+
+Recently I've been rekindling a two-decades-old interest in Forth.
+Evidently I have a masochistic streak that even Perl can't satisfy.
+I want to write tests in Forth and run them using prove (you can
+find my gforth TAP experiments at
+https://svn.hexten.net/andy/Forth/Testing/). I can use the --exec
+switch to tell prove to run the tests using gforth like this:
+
+ prove -r --exec gforth t
+
+Alternately, if the language used to write my tests allows a shebang
+line I can use that to specify the interpreter. Here's a test written
+in PHP:
+
+ #!/usr/bin/php
+ <?php
+ print "1..2\n";
+ print "ok 1\n";
+ print "not ok 2\n";
+ ?>
+
+If I save that as t/phptest.t the shebang line will ensure that it
+runs correctly along with all my other tests.
+
+=head2 Mixing it up
+
+Subtle interdependencies between test programs can mask problems -
+for example an earlier test may neglect to remove a temporary file
+that affects the behaviour of a later test. To find this kind of
+problem I use the --shuffle and --reverse options to run my tests
+in random or reversed order.
+
+=head2 Rolling My Own
+
+If I need a feature that prove doesn't provide I can easily write my own.
+
+Typically you'll want to change how TAP gets I<input> into and I<output>
+from the parser. L<App::Prove> supports arbitrary plugins, and L<TAP::Harness>
+supports custom I<formatters> and I<source handlers> that you can load using
+either L<prove> or L<Module::Build>; there are many examples to base mine on.
+For more details see L<App::Prove>, L<TAP::Parser::SourceHandler>, and
+L<TAP::Formatter::Base>.
+
+If writing a plugin is not enough, you can write your own test harness; one of
+the motives for the 3.00 rewrite of Test::Harness was to make it easier to
+subclass and extend.
+
+The Test::Harness module is a compatibility wrapper around TAP::Harness.
+For new applications I should use TAP::Harness directly. As we'll
+see, prove uses TAP::Harness.
+
+When I run prove it processes its arguments, figures out which test
+scripts to run and then passes control to TAP::Harness to run the
+tests, parse, analyse and present the results. By subclassing
+TAP::Harness I can customise many aspects of the test run.
+
+I want to log my test results in a database so I can track them
+over time. To do this I override the summary method in TAP::Harness.
+I start with a simple prototype that dumps the results as a YAML
+document:
+
+ package My::TAP::Harness;
+
+ use base 'TAP::Harness';
+ use YAML;
+
+ sub summary {
+ my ( $self, $aggregate ) = @_;
+ print Dump( $aggregate );
+ $self->SUPER::summary( $aggregate );
+ }
+
+ 1;
+
+I need to tell prove to use my My::TAP::Harness. If My::TAP::Harness
+is on Perl's @INC include path I can
+
+ prove --harness=My::TAP::Harness -rb t
+
+If I don't have My::TAP::Harness installed on @INC I need to provide
+the correct path to perl when I run prove:
+
+ perl -Ilib `which prove` --harness=My::TAP::Harness -rb t
+
+I can incorporate these options into my own version of prove. It's
+pretty simple. Most of the work of prove is handled by App::Prove.
+The important code in prove is just:
+
+ use App::Prove;
+
+ my $app = App::Prove->new;
+ $app->process_args(@ARGV);
+ exit( $app->run ? 0 : 1 );
+
+If I write a subclass of App::Prove I can customise any aspect of
+the test runner while inheriting all of prove's behaviour. Here's
+myprove:
+
+ #!/usr/bin/env perl use lib qw( lib ); # Add ./lib to @INC
+ use App::Prove;
+
+ my $app = App::Prove->new;
+
+ # Use custom TAP::Harness subclass
+ $app->harness( 'My::TAP::Harness' );
+
+ $app->process_args( @ARGV ); exit( $app->run ? 0 : 1 );
+
+Now I can run my tests like this
+
+ ./myprove -rb t
+
+=head2 Deeper Customisation
+
+Now that I know how to subclass and replace TAP::Harness I can
+replace any other part of the harness. To do that I need to know
+which classes are responsible for which functionality. Here's a
+brief guided tour; the default class for each component is shown
+in parentheses. Normally any replacements I write will be subclasses
+of these default classes.
+
+When I run my tests TAP::Harness creates a scheduler
+(TAP::Parser::Scheduler) to work out the running order for the
+tests, an aggregator (TAP::Parser::Aggregator) to collect and analyse
+the test results and a formatter (TAP::Formatter::Console) to display
+those results.
+
+If I'm running my tests in parallel there may also be a multiplexer
+(TAP::Parser::Multiplexer) - the component that allows multiple
+tests to run simultaneously.
+
+Once it has created those helpers TAP::Harness starts running the
+tests. For each test it creates a new parser (TAP::Parser) which
+is responsible for running the test script and parsing its output.
+
+To replace any of these components I call one of these harness
+methods with the name of the replacement class:
+
+ aggregator_class
+ formatter_class
+ multiplexer_class
+ parser_class
+ scheduler_class
+
+For example, to replace the aggregator I would
+
+ $harness->aggregator_class( 'My::Aggregator' );
+
+Alternately I can supply the names of my substitute classes to the
+TAP::Harness constructor:
+
+ my $harness = TAP::Harness->new(
+ { aggregator_class => 'My::Aggregator' }
+ );
+
+If I need to reach even deeper into the internals of the harness I
+can replace the classes that TAP::Parser uses to execute test scripts
+and tokenise their output. Before running a test script TAP::Parser
+creates a grammar (TAP::Parser::Grammar) to decode the raw TAP into
+tokens, a result factory (TAP::Parser::ResultFactory) to turn the
+decoded TAP results into objects and, depending on whether it's
+running a test script or reading TAP from a file, scalar or array
+a source or an iterator (TAP::Parser::IteratorFactory).
+
+Each of these objects may be replaced by calling one of these parser
+methods:
+
+ source_class
+ perl_source_class
+ grammar_class
+ iterator_factory_class
+ result_factory_class
+
+=head2 Callbacks
+
+As an alternative to subclassing the components I need to change I
+can attach callbacks to the default classes. TAP::Harness exposes
+these callbacks:
+
+ parser_args Tweak the parameters used to create the parser
+ made_parser Just made a new parser
+ before_runtests About to run tests
+ after_runtests Have run all tests
+ after_test Have run an individual test script
+
+TAP::Parser also supports callbacks; bailout, comment, plan, test,
+unknown, version and yaml are called for the corresponding TAP
+result types, ALL is called for all results, ELSE is called for all
+results for which a named callback is not installed and EOF is
+called once at the end of each TAP stream.
+
+To install a callback I pass the name of the callback and a subroutine
+reference to TAP::Harness or TAP::Parser's callback method:
+
+ $harness->callback( after_test => sub {
+ my ( $script, $desc, $parser ) = @_;
+ } );
+
+I can also pass callbacks to the constructor:
+
+ my $harness = TAP::Harness->new({
+ callbacks => {
+ after_test => sub {
+ my ( $script, $desc, $parser ) = @_;
+ # Do something interesting here
+ }
+ }
+ });
+
+When it comes to altering the behaviour of the test harness there's
+more than one way to do it. Which way is best depends on my
+requirements. In general if I only want to observe test execution
+without changing the harness' behaviour (for example to log test
+results to a database) I choose callbacks. If I want to make the
+harness behave differently subclassing gives me more control.
+
+=head2 Parsing TAP
+
+Perhaps I don't need a complete test harness. If I already have a
+TAP test log that I need to parse all I need is TAP::Parser and the
+various classes it depends upon. Here's the code I need to run a
+test and parse its TAP output
+
+ use TAP::Parser;
+
+ my $parser = TAP::Parser->new( { source => 't/simple.t' } );
+ while ( my $result = $parser->next ) {
+ print $result->as_string, "\n";
+ }
+
+Alternately I can pass an open filehandle as source and have the
+parser read from that rather than attempting to run a test script:
+
+ open my $tap, '<', 'tests.tap'
+ or die "Can't read TAP transcript ($!)\n";
+ my $parser = TAP::Parser->new( { source => $tap } );
+ while ( my $result = $parser->next ) {
+ print $result->as_string, "\n";
+ }
+
+This approach is useful if I need to convert my TAP based test
+results into some other representation. See TAP::Convert::TET
+(http://search.cpan.org/dist/TAP-Convert-TET/) for an example of
+this approach.
+
+=head2 Getting Support
+
+The Test::Harness developers hang out on the tapx-dev mailing
+list[1]. For discussion of general, language independent TAP issues
+there's the tap-l[2] list. Finally there's a wiki dedicated to the
+Test Anything Protocol[3]. Contributions to the wiki, patches and
+suggestions are all welcome.
+
+=for comment
+ The URLs in [1] and [2] point to 404 pages. What are currently the
+ correct URLs?
+
+[1] L<http://www.hexten.net/mailman/listinfo/tapx-dev>
+[2] L<http://testanything.org/mailman/listinfo/tap-l>
+[3] L<http://testanything.org/>