NAME

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

EXPERIMENTAL CODE WARNING

This is an experimental release! Test-Stream, and all its components are still in an experimental phase. This dist has been released to cpan in order to allow testers and early adopters the chance to write experimental new tools with it, or to add experimental support for it into old tools.

PLEASE DO NOT COMPLETELY CONVERT OLD TOOLS YET. This experimental release is very likely to see a lot of code churn. API's may break at any time. Test-Stream should NOT be depended on by any toolchain level tools until the experimental phase is over.

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