Next steps for "cabal test" feature

[Thomas Tuegel]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Duncan Coutts
<duncan.coutts at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Thomas,
>
> As you'll have noticed, I've pushed all your cabal test patches. I did a
> bit of reorganising on top of that but nothing drastic.
>
> For the moment I've kept the "detailed" test type at version 0.9 since
> we are still discussing some details there.
>
> I've added a few TODOs in the test section of
> Distribution/Simple/Setup.hs. Either you or I should have a go at those
> some time. I think we talked about the append and reply features before.
> I don't recall if you said we needed them or not.
>
> For the Cabal-1.10 branch, I'm toying between a few options:
>     1. Remove the test feature from the 1.10.x release entirely
>     2. Update to the current state of the test patches in cabal HEAD
>     3. Update to the current state of the test patches in cabal HEAD
>        but then disable the detailed test type, keeping just the basic
>        test interface for the 1.10.x releases.
>
> We have to do something because the current 1.10.x branch has half the
> test patches and so has a random intermediate API. I'm inclined to go
> for option 3. The plan would be to get some experience with the basic
> interface in a few real packages and to work on getting the detailed API
> sorted out in time for the next major release. That does not need to be
> 12 months away, I've done major releases part-way in the GHC cycle
> before. Lemme know what you think.

I'm also inclined toward option 3.  I don't think developers are going
to rush to immediately convert their test suites to the detailed
interface anyway, so the benefits of having it are mostly long-term.
There are also the issues to work out with Max.  Additionally, several
people approached me at HIW with the same concern about the
TestOptions class--using class functions as data field accessors--and
I think I can address those concerns and make a better interface all
in one go.  So, option 3 gives us time to think about these things.

-- 
Thomas Tuegel