Are there any good automated test suites for Perl? [closed]

Answer 1

If you're using ExtUtils::MakeMaker or Module::Build, then you can run all your tests automatically by entering the command "make test" or "Build test", which will execute any *.t files in your project's t/ subfolder.

If you're not using either of these, then you can use TAP::Harness to automate execution of multiple test scripts.

To actually write the tests, use Test::More or any of the modules that others have suggested here.

Answer 2

As of now, we use Test::More but current issue is that we have to run all the test files manually for testing. What I am looking for is a more of automated framework which can do incremental testing/build checks etc.

A wrapper around Test::More for that would be ideal but anything better and more functional would be fine too.

I am going through PerlUnit to see if that helps.

Answer 3

Are you aware of the 'prove' utility (from App::Prove)? You can tell it to run all the tests recursively in a given directory, with or without verbosity, etc.

Answer 4

The test suite framework of choice is Test::Harness, which takes care of controlling a test run, collecting the results, etc.

Various modules exist to provide certain kinds of tests, the most common of which can be found in Test::Simple and Test::More (both are included in the Test-Simple distribution). The entire Test namespace on the CPAN is dedicated to specialized unit-testing modules, the majority of which are designed to be run under Test::Harness.

By convention, tests are stored in the t/ directory of a project, and each test file uses the file extension .t ; tests are commonly run via

 prove t/*.t

Module distributions typically include a make target named 'test' that runs the test suite before installation. By default, the CPAN installation process requires that tests pass after the build before a module will be installed.

Answer 5

You said:

"What I am looking for is a more of automated framework which can do incremental testing/build checks etc"

Still not entirely sure what you're after. As others have mentioned you want to look at things that are based on Test::Harness/TAP. The vast majority of the Perl testing community uses that framework - so you'll get much more support (and useful existing code) by using that.

Can you talk a little more about what you mean by "incremental testing/build checks"?

I'm guessing that you want to divide up your tests into groups so that you're only running certain sets of tests in certain circumstances?

There are a couple of ways to do this. The simplest would be to just use the file system - split up your test directories so you have things like:

core/
 database.t
 infrastructure.t
style/
  percritic.t
ui/
  something.t
  something-else.t

And so on... you can then use the command line "prove" tool to run them all, or only certain directories, etc.

prove has a lot of useful options that let you choose which tests are run and in which order (e.g. things like most-recently-failed order). This - all by itself - will probably get you towards what you need.

(BTW it's important to get a recent version of Test::Simple/prove/etc. from CPAN. Recent versions have much, much more functionality).

If you're of an OO mindset, or have previous experience of xUnit frameworks, than you might want to take a look at Test::Class which is a Perl xUnit framework that's build on top of the TAP/Test::Harness layer. I think it's quite a lot better than PerlUnit - but I would say that since I wrote it :-)

Check out delicious for some more info on Test::Class http://delicious.com/tag/Test::Class

If this isn't what you're after - could you go into a bit more detail on what functionality you want?

Cheers,

Adrian

Answer 6

Have you seen smolder?

"Smoke Test Aggregator used by developers and testers to upload (automated or manually) and view smoke/regression tests using the Test Anything Protocol. Details and trends are graphed and notifications provided via email or Atom feeds."