Re^6: Does anybody write tests first?

[kyle]

in reply to Re^5: Does anybody write tests first?
in thread Does anybody write tests first?

unless you are testing more than one module from that test script (which I assume no one does)

Sorry this was unclear. When I wrote of a "simple sanity check before deployment", I actually did mean a test script that does nothing but use_ok over and over with no other tests.

When I've had a project with numerous modules, I have found it useful to have use_ok tests for all of them in one place.

my @modules = get_module_list();
plan 'tests' => scalar @modules;
foreach my $module ( @modules ) {
    use_ok( $module );
}

If get_module_list() is bright enough to use File::Find, it will pick up modules without me having to explicitly list them. I get a sanity check on even those modules for which I haven't written more extensive tests. As I said, if your other testing isn't very good, checking that use works is a start.

[BrowserUk]

For the reasons given in {net information loss), I see no advantage to your script over:

my @modules = get_module_list();
foreach my $module ( @modules ) {
    require $module;
}

Except that you might discover more than one missing/corrupted module. But, and a very significant one IMO, is that you sould lose the information that told you why the (first) module failed to load. Eg.

• Module missing:

  Can't locate Non/Existant.pm in @INC (@INC contains: C:/Perl/lib C:/Pe
  +rl/site/lib .) at
  BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at -e line 1.
  

• Compilation error:

  syntax error at Existant.pm line 2, near ") {"
  Compilation failed in require at -e line 1.
  BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at -e line 1.
  

• Other(s)?