consider testing framework alternatives

[ylixir]

Phpunit has a lot of dependencies and ls very complicated.

Composer is very slow. This means slow CI builds.

Tests should be very literate and lend themselves to generating documentation, neither of which i'm convinced phpunit does.

On the other hand the typical lack of choice in the php ecosystem means that choosing another framework could lead to significant friction with community adoption of the project.

see

• http://adambrett.github.io/tweetest/
• https://gist.github.com/mathiasverraes/9046427
• https://matthiasnoback.nl/2014/07/descriptive-unit-tests/

[ylixir]

the providers system that phpunit uses where you put directives in comments is pretty awkward. could easily be replaced with a more functional interface

[ylixir]

tweetest output could get really chatty for many tests

[ylixir]

it would be nice to see the current running test in case a logic bug or lack of injectable dependencies causes crashes, hangs, or other badness

[ylixir]

phpunits reliance on exceptions for functionality makes stack traces and debugging problematic. often it is difficault to track down the source of problems when things go really sideways

[ylixir]

a testing framework should show the test in progress.

poorly written tests suck and should be tattled on

also if tests could be extracted from example code in the docs, that would be amazing

[ylixir]

interesting contenders are:

• atoum
• phpspec
• infection