Re: [GSoC Proposal] automake - Interfacing with a test protocol like TAP or subunit

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Robert Collins wrote on Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 10:03:10AM CET:
> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > * Robert Collins wrote on Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 05:10:16AM CET:
> >> TAP is an extremely simple protocol, and the extensions to it to
> >> support things like not needing to maintain the count of tests,
> >> additional debug data and so on are pretty rudimentary. subunit, which
> >> I've mentioned before was written after TAP, to solve similar problems
> >> and address the issues in TAP itself.
> >
> > Are TAP and subunit compatible on their common subset?  If not, why not?
> 
> You can convert TAP to subunit, and you can convert the things TAP can
> represent from subunit to TAP. subunit's core is more structured than
> TAP, so the two protocols don't pun as each other at all.

Are there existing converters?

> >> Unlike TAP subunit supports attachments (binary and text) to tests,
> >
> > Handling of binary data may end up being quite tricky within a
> > restricted Posix environment with only a few tools available.
> > What if a consumer cannot handle them?  Is there possibility
> > for graceful fallback?
> 
> I didn't think posix had 7 bit limits?

Well, I meant generally handling binary data with shell tools only.
Analyzing binary data with portable shell tools can be tricky.

> Anyhow, there is a baseline
> profile which assumes just a single description of the error in a test
> - it uses \r] to delimit a traceback. Alternatively, a C parser - on
> my 'sometime' TODO list - will probably clock in small enough to
> bundle for projects very low in the dependency stack.

It would be nice if autotools could cope without compiled code.  That
leads to complications when $CC is a cross-compiler.  But I see in the
link that seemingly a shell consumer already exists.  So maybe my
worries are moot.

Is there any way we can measure existing usage of TAP or subunit that
doesn't rely on hearsay?

Thanks,
Ralf