Re^7: Introspecting function signatures

[jcb]

My suggestion is to just have the test routine call back into the framework:

sub test_something {
  my $tempdir = create_tempdir();
# ...
}

Then the framework only needs to iterate over the package stash and call all test_* functions. Which leads to a "is this a good idea?" question — this style of testing means that the test routines are included with the main code and will have to be compiled every time the module is loaded. Python reduces this overhead by automatically using its form of B::Bytecode/ByteLoader but Perl does not do that, so this style will add some incremental overhead to all use of any module using it. The traditional Perl style of separate test scripts completely avoids this last problem.

[LanX]

Not sure what Python is implementing with that pattern, but I know it doesn't have block-scope, OTOH nesting functions is easier there.

So many things which are just blocks in Perl become named functions there, even lamda is useless for that.

But no need to copy their limitations.

My suggestion would be to apply attributes or explicit use

sub :test something {
  my :TEMPDIR $tempdir = shift;   # or
  my :FIXTURE $tempdir = shift;   # or 
  use fixture qw/$tempdir/;    
  #...

}

This offers plenty of possibilities at compile time and is more flexible than Python's approach.

edit

and I'd certainly put test-subs into their own package, if they lived in the same file.

[jcb]

I'd certainly put test-subs into their own package, if they lived in the same file.

That does not reduce the overhead problem I mentioned — the test-subs will still be compiled every time the module containing them is loaded. Only putting the tests into a separate file solves that problem.

[szabgab]

This can indeed be a good solution. Given that perl will reliably call DESTROY when an object goes out of scope, this could ensure that whatever the object holds will be cleaned up. It is a bit more code to write as we need to call the function, but might be reasonable.

sub test_something {
    my $tempdir = create_tempdir();
    # ...
}

I don't know where the idea came from that in Python people include the tests in the main code. Maybe that was the case 10 years ago, but these days the standard is that tests are in separate files called test_SOMETHING.py.

[LanX]

you'll also have the benefit of putting repeated fixtures in the closure.

compare this Pytest discussion about the resulting boilerplate

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63292928/add-pytest-fixtures-to-a-test-class-using-dependency-injection

you might want to avoid importing their flows. :)

[szabgab]

I am not sure what closure are you talking about here, but the best would be if you could show a code snippet how you think it would be used in a test? And yes, it would be nice to avoid the linked problem.