[TIP] Skipping tests (was:Re: Ideology)

[Douglas Philips]

On or about 2009 Apr 24, at 4:13 PM, Doug Hellmann indited:
> Yeah, it sounds like we have different use cases.  Usually the tests  
> I want to skip require some specialized piece of hardware (like a  
> particular brand of network switch or storage array).  The entire  
> test module is tagged to be skipped by the automated run by default,  
> and we only enable the tests when the equipment is available.

Probably are different, but I am wondering if this is an optimization  
of test loading time issue or something deeper?

We use positional command line arguments to facilitate rapid test  
development so that we don't "load up the whole sheebang" while a test  
(or three) are being worked on or debugged post-facto. Our automation  
(buildbot, but that isn't important right now), it is supposed to load  
up everything and then do filtering, and the test loading time has  
been Mariana Trench below the noise level in profiling where our  
testing time goes. Given the emphasis recently on distributed test  
execution, that is not true for "real" unit tests. :)

It seems reasonable to have layers of skipping-ness, hopefully as  
shadings of a general mechanism...

--Doug