From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2003-04-02T03:35:34+09:00
Subject: sharing objects between tests (revisited?)

I don't know if I've asked this on this list before or only on irc (I
can't find an earlier post on the subject, so I appologize if I'm asking
this a second time; I don't remember the answer).

I have a number of tests that create some object.  The tests are not
unit tests, but I am using a unit test framework (RUNIT or Test::Unit)
to write the tests.  This object is expensive (time-wise) to create, and
I would like to share the object between my tests.  If I write this:

  class MyTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
    def setup
      @f = Foo.new
    end

    def test_1
    end

    def test_2
    end
  end

then @f gets constructed twice; once for each instance of MyTest.

I'm currently doing this instead:

  $f = Foo.new

  class MyTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
    def setup
      @f = $f
    end

    def test_1
    end

    def test_2
    end
  end

but surely there has to be a better way!  What can I do?

Paul