[Bioperl-l] Installing all modules required for testing

[Chris Fields]

On Jul 5, 2007, at 10:04 AM, Nathan S. Haigh wrote:

> ...
>> If they are only necessary for tests, work for all OSs, and are pure
>> Perl they should be added to t/lib, like Test::More and the rest.  If
>> they only work for some OSs they could be added to t/lib and skip
>> based on OS, but they still must be pure Perl.  I would avoid
>> anything that requires any compiling for XS or Inline altogether (I
>> don't want to go down the nightmare road of OS-dependent compiler
>> issues for a few tests).
>
> If this is the case, there surely is no need to skip the tests if  
> they should be provided in the t/lib dir. Am I missing something!?

No, you are correct, but these are currently not in t/lib (unless  
someone snuck them in....)

Of the modules you listed above, only one (IO::String) is required by  
the core modules.  The others are not.  Users shouldn't be forced to  
install Algorithm::Diff or IO::ScalarArray just to run tests, so  
anything not required should go into t/lib if at all possible.

If there any reasons (OS issues, list of prereqs) which preclude  
adding these to t/lib we need to ask ourselves (1) why we are using  
that module in the first place?  And, if there is a good reason, (2)  
can we skip them if they aren't present?  Both of those options are  
already available.

chris