From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2004-08-11T23:12:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Test::Unit output

On Wednesday, August 11, 2004, 5:36:18 PM, Charles wrote:

> I was curious if there are other test modes on test::unit which are more
> descriptive of the progress through each file of testing.  I think this
> would be particularly useful for running test cases like those in the
> ruby interpreter.  If the interpreter segfaults in the middle of running
> tests, and all you have are a bunch of .'s and E's how are you supposed
> to tell what it failed on?  Also while the .'s are alright for a short
> set, it would seem as if some sort of progress description over each
> test file would be more descriptive of the progress while testing.

Once or twice I've written my own test runner that executes each test
class in turn, so when it goes ..........E...F...., you know right
away which file is causing trouble.  That makes sense for a large test
suite.

In general, though, I usually restrict the test run to the file that's
relevant to what I'm working on.  Saves time.

> Has this been gone over before?

Not that I know of.

> Any particular reason for the choice of the dotted output?

A premium on simplicity of output, I think.  In the common case (all
tests work), you don't want lots of crap filling up the screen.

Cheers,
Gavin