NAME

Test::Stream::Plugin::CanFork - Skip a test file unless the system supports forking

DESCRIPTION

It is fairly common to write tests that need to fork. Not all systems support forking. This library does the hard work of checking if forking is supported on the current system. If forking is not supported then this will skip all tests and exit true.

SYNOPSIS

    use Test::Stream::Plugin::CanFork;

    ... Code that forks ...

or

    use Test::Stream::Plugin::CanFork real => 1;

    ... Code that requires true fork support (not emulated) ...

EXPLANATION

Checking if the current system supports forking is not simple, here is an example of how to do it:

    use Config;

    sub CAN_FORK {
        return 1 if $Config{d_fork};

        # Some platforms use ithreads to mimick forking
        return 0 unless $^O eq 'MSWin32' || $^O eq 'NetWare';
        return 0 unless $Config{useithreads};
        return 0 unless $Config{ccflags} =~ /-DPERL_IMPLICIT_SYS/;

        # Threads are not reliable before 5.008001
        return 0 unless $] >= 5.008001;

        # Devel::Cover currently breaks with threads
        return 0 if $INC{'Devel/Cover.pm'};
        return 1;
    }

Duplicating this non-trivial code in all tests that need to fork is dumb. It is easy to forget bits, or get it wrong. On top of these checks you also need to tell the harness that no tests should run and why.

SEE ALSO

Test::Stream::Plugin::CanThread

Skip the test file if the system does not support threads.

Test::Stream

Test::Stream::Plugin::CanFork uses Test::Stream under the hood.

SOURCE

The source code repository for Test::Stream can be found at http://github.com/Test-More/Test-Stream/.

MAINTAINERS

Chad Granum <exodist@cpan.org>

AUTHORS

Chad Granum <exodist@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2015 Chad Granum <exodist7@gmail.com>.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

See http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html