Re: TestFest 2010

Hi Eric

So I began to think of the real sore spots in writing and running PHP tests and here's what I came up with. 1. I plan to do a whole series of screencasts on writing and running PHP tests. Cover running tests on Mac, Windows and Linux using fairly stock configurations. Cover the different methods of running tests (single, multiple, all). Good idea.

2. Here's the biggy. I'd like to have a site where you can upload a test and have the test run against multiple versions of PHP and multiple OSes. How do we pull it off? Not a freakin clue. Maybe have a front-end site that allows the test upload which then pushes the test off to other servers and aggregates the test results? Maybe store the test and results in a database. I don't know, but I'll continue to think on this and if anyone has any ideas and can offer coding time (and more importantly server resources), please let me know. I did this a bit last year. The _very hacky_ scripts that I used to do it are in SVN and I could probably find them. I don't recommend using them but they might serve a a checklist of things you need to think about. I only looked at two platforms, 32 bit and 64 bit Linux - this was worth doing and more platforms would be better, I had (have) no clue how to do Windows but I think Mac would be a reasonably easy addition. I'd also recommend doing the most simple possible thing - last year there was an hourly cron job on each platform that extracted tests and ran them against PHP52, 53 and 6. The next more complex thing would be to use a build system hooked into SVN that just builds (runs all the tests) after a pre-set number of SVN changes. This might be easy for someone who already knows how to do it, I ruled it out last year because I didn't have time to do it.

It's worth thinking pretty hard about the file structure in the SVN repo - I think that was one thing we got about right and it made checking out tests and testing them reasonably easy.

##### runtests.php ##### I've spoken with Zoe regarding the status of runtests.php and offered to pick up where her and the rest of revamp team left off. I had hoped to have it complete and ready for TestFest this year, but I've been inexcusably slow in picking it up and running with it. Once I get some of the things above knocked off, I intended to focus heavily on it and get it out the door. If your reading this Zoe, apologizes, and I'll be in contact again soon. As you can see - I'm reading but have been equally busy so have not been chasing you :-/

Zoe