Parallel execution of unittests

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 08:43:31AM -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> Last but not least, virtually nobody I know runs unittests and then
> main.  This is quickly becoming an idiom:
> 
> version(unittest) void main() {}
> else void main()
> {
>    ...
> }
> 
> I think it's time to change that. We could do it the
> non-backward-compatible way by redefining -unittest to instruct the
> compiler to not run main. Or we could define another flag such as
> -unittest-only and then deprecate the existing one.
[...]

Actually, I still run unittests before main. :) When I want to *not* run
unittests, I just recompile with -release (and no -unittest).

The nice thing about unittests running before main is that during the
code-compile-test cycle I can have the unittests run *and* manually test
the program afterwards -- usually in this case I only run the program
once before modifying the code and recompiling, so it would be needless
work to have to compile the program twice (once for unittests, once for
main).

An alternative, perhaps nicer, idea is to have a *runtime* switch to run
unittests, recognized by druntime, perhaps something like:

	./program --pragma-druntime-run-unittests

Or something similarly unlikely to clash with real options accepted by
the program.


T

-- 
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard