NAME
SYNOPSIS
OVERVIEW
PROVE VS. "MAKE TEST"
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
BUGS
TODO
AUTHORS
COPYRIGHT

NAME

prove -- A command-line tool for running tests against Test::Harness

SYNOPSIS

prove [options] [files/directories]

Options:

    -b  --blib      Adds blib/lib to the path for your tests, a la "use blib".
    -d  --debug     Includes extra debugging information.
    -D  --dry       Dry run: Show the tests to run, but don't run them.
        --ext       Extensions (defaults to .t)
    -h  --help      Display this help
    -H  --man       Longer manpage for prove
    -I              Add libraries to @INC, as Perl's -I
    -r  --recurse   Recursively descend into directories.
    -s  --shuffle   Run the tests in a random order.
    -T  --taint     Run under taint mode
    -v  --verbose   Display standard output of test scripts while running them.
    -V  --version   Display version info

OVERVIEW

prove is a command-line interface to the test-running functionality of Test::Harness. With no arguments, it will run all tests in the current directory.

Shell metacharacters may be used with command lines options and will be exanded via glob.

PROVE VS. "MAKE TEST"

prove has a number of advantages over make test when doing development.

prove is designed as a development tool
Perl users typically run the test harness through a makefile via make test. That's fine for module distributions, but it's suboptimal for a test/code/debug development cycle.
prove is granular
prove lets your run against only the files you want to check. Running prove t/live/ t/master.t checks every *.t in t/live, plus t/master.t.
prove has an easy verbose mode
To get full test program output from make test, you must set HARNESS_VERBOSE in the environment. prove has a -v option.
prove can run under taint mode
prove's -T runs your tests under perl -T.
prove can shuffle tests
You can use prove's --shuffle option to try to excite problems that don't show up when tests are run in the same order every time.
Not everything is a module
More and more users are using Perl's testing tools outside the context of a module distribution, and may not even use a makefile at all.

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

-b, --blib

Adds blib/lib to the path for your tests, a la "use blib".

-d, --debug

Include debug information about how prove is being run. This option doesn't show the output from the test scripts. That's handled by -v,--verbose.

-D, --dry

Dry run: Show the tests to run, but don't run them.

-r, --recurse

Descends into subdirectories of any directories specified, looking for tests.

Sometimes tests are accidentally dependent on tests that have been run before. This switch will shuffle the tests to be run prior to running them, thus ensuring that hidden dependencies in the test order are likely to be revealed. The author hopes the run the algorithm on the preceding sentence to see if he can produce something slightly less awkward.