[Bioperl-l] Bioperl tests: Test, Test::Simple, Test::More?

[Chris Fields]

> Torsten Seemann wrote:
> >  >> Frankly, I think we should change that to v 5.8; it's been out for
> >  >> over three years now.  perl 5.10 isn't too far off (let alone Perl6)
> >  >> and perl 5.005, according to CPAN, is 8 years old.
> 
> I remember that a while back the same kind of discussion took place on
> the Parrot mailing list, http://www.parrotcode.org.
> The result was to require 5.6.1 or later, as perl 5.6.0 wasn't very
> stable.
> 
> With 5.6.1 required, some cleanup could be done, e.g.
> - Replace 'use vars qw( $dummy );' with 'our $dummy;'
> - Get rid of IO::Scalar.
> 
> 
> Just my $0.02,
> 
>    Bernhard Schmalhofer

I remember something about problems with v5.6.  So I agree here: at the very
least, we should be using 5.6.1.  We probably should think about syntax
updates as 

My point with requiring v. 5.8 is we can take advantage of several features
present in v. 5.8 and not present in v. 5.6; Test::More was only one of
them.  Torsten pointed out several features that were major changes between
5.6 and 5.8.  However, Hilmar also has a strong point about leaving those
perl 5.6 users behind.  

Hilmar, do you have any suggestions on how we would poll users for their
perl versions?  I suppose we could do something like that here if needed.

Anyway, until we know more we could stick with requiring v. 5.6.1 and
strongly recommending v. 5.8, and move to a 5.8 requirement later (maybe for
bioperl v. 1.6).  As for Test::More, we could always include it as a
requirement along with v. 5.6.1 if needed, or include it in Bundle::Bioperl.
Or (most extreme) just include it in the distribution like we currently do
with Test (not my favorite option, just more bioperl-core bloat).  

Chris