Re: TAP test breakage on MacOS X

On 10/28/14 9:09 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> I agree we should get rid of subplans.

I removed subtests. Everything now runs (without skipping) with Perl
5.8+ plus IPC::Run.

> I have looked into IPC::Cmd, but the documentation keeps telling me that
> to do anything interesting I have to have IPC::Run anyway. I'll give it
> a try, though.

I tried this, but I'm not optimistic about it. While parts of IPC::Cmd
are actually a bit nicer than IPC::Run, other parts are weird. For
example, with most packages and functions in Perl that run a command,
you can pass the command as a string or as a list (or array reference).
The latter is preferred because it avoids issues with quoting, word
splitting, spaces, etc. In IPC::Run, I can use the "run" function in
the latter way, but I cannot use the "run_forked" function like that,
and I need that one to get the exit code of a command. It's possible to
work around that, but I'm getting the feeling that this is not very well
designed.

Also, IPC::Cmd is a wrapper module, and it passes the hard work down to
other modules, depending on what's available. I think that sounds like
a portability problem waiting to happen.