How can one reliably run unittests

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On Wednesday, 25 August 2021 at 07:50:50 UTC, Mathias LANG wrote:
> This. I think the original implementers had a different idea of 
> how things would be used. For a long time, unittests would run 
> first, then the main would be called. We all know how annoying 
> that was, (most) people do not want this, they wanted two 
> different modes, clearly separated. I say most, because there 
> are still a few hold out I think.

I think there's also a complexity that the compiler cannot know 
which main to ignore (e.g. application main) versus which main to 
keep (e.g. a custom-written main inserted for running unittests, 
as some frameworks do).

That's surely readily solvable but it suggests that there should 
be a ready way to distinguish between entry points for running an 
app versus entry points for running tests (so that test-suite 
implementations can override the latter and have it Just Work).

I fully agree with you and Amaury that this _should_ be solved 
and that the user shouldn't have to bother with workarounds like 
the one that I shared above.