If HTML::TreeBuilder is not installed, running perl ../bin/TestRunner.pl InitFormTests.pm throws very noisy errors instead of just warning that the tests can not be run. This is distracting when I run the whole TWikiSuite.pm.

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Why didn't you just install HTML::TreeBuilder?

I hate tests that just tell you they can't be run. It just gives people an excuse to ignore the test. To me, that's a test failure. Looking at the code for this test, it does bottle out if HTML::TreeBuilder isn't installed, which IMHO is wrong.

If that bugs you, why not recode the test to eliminate HTML::TreeBuilder? From glancing at those tests, they should be recoded to use $this->assert_html_equals anyway, which is tolerant to changing parameter orders in HTML tags.

CC

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To be honest: Before I ran the tests on one of my systems, I would have sworn that I have HTML::TreeBuilder installed, because I use to have it in all my installations.

In InitFormTests.pm, setup_formtests returns undef if HTML::TreeBuilder isn't installed, but test_form ignores that. This gives an error message for every test in the summary, which is anything but helpful:

1) /home/haj/public_html/TWikiRelease04x00/test/unit/InitFormTests.pm:152 - test_form(InitFormTests)
Can't call method "content_list" on an undefined value

I'll hack around this to produce a better message for now (and therefore setting to "Actioning").

But there's another gotcha lurking, which deserves a Codev brainstorming. When the tests failed, it occurred to me that TWiki's unit test mechanism lacks a decent way to cope with missing "non-TWiki" CPAN libraries in general. What if I'd like to use Acme::This::Very::Strange::Module for a particular unit test? But should I insist on every tester installing it?

haj

I seem to be unable to eliminate HTML::TreeBuilder, so the current checkin just improves the diagnostics. Back to "Waiting for Feedback".

haj

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Guys, writing test cases is hard enough. Let me at least use something to make my life easier.

It is not very hard to install HTML::TreeBuilder. Anybody who can run test suites can do so, I think. It sure is easier to dissect the HTML that way. I am willing to rewrite if we use another HTML parser, but I am not going to do this all with regexes. -- TW

I'm inclined to agree. If we start imposing too many constraints, we will never get people to write tests; it's hard enough already!

Discarding for that reason.

CC

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Fair enough. I never intended to impose a constraint. But please don't rollback r11677, because with better diagnostics we will probably get people to actually run the tests before doing their checkins.

haj