Re: how to handle missing "prove"

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> On 10/28/14 10:01 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>> On 10/28/14 9:16 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> ISTM that the project policy for external components like this has been
>>> "don't rely on them unless user says to use them, in which case fail if
>>> they aren't present".  So perhaps what we ought to have is a configure
>>> switch along the lines of "--enable-tap-tests".  If you don't specify it,
>>> prove_check expands to nothing.  If you do specify it, we fail if we
>>> lack any of the expected support, both "prove" and whatever the agreed-on
>>> set of Perl modules is.

>> That's also a good idea.

> Here is a patch.

Looks generally reasonable, but I thought you were planning to choose a
different option name?

One minor nitpick: perhaps the --help description of the option should
read

+  --enable-tap-tests      enable TAP tests (requires Perl and IPC::Run)

because in practice it'll be much more likely that people will be missing
IPC::Run than that they'll be missing Perl altogether.

Also, shouldn't we have it fail rather than just skipping tests if
IPC::Run is missing?
        regards, tom lane