Re: colorful tests

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Benoit,

* Benoit SIGOURE wrote on Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 06:50:08PM CET:
> On Nov 4, 2007, at 6:41 PM, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
>>
>> I took the various bits of code from the parallel tests check.mk from
>> Akim and tried to mangle that suitable for inclusion in Automake.
>> This is what I ended up with.  (More topics to follow.)
>> What do you think about it?
>
> It looks great.

Thanks for looking at it.  Another question that came to me:

While `parallel-tests' (the next Automake option to be implemented)
is certainly needed (as the chance is large that the new code will
break at least some existing test suites), I'm not sure color-tests
is even needed.  We could just make color the default for everyone
(given capable terminal of course).  But maybe developers with exotic
terminal color settings will be upset.

Of course the step of making color-tests the default could also be
done some time later.  (Maybe including also a no-color-tests for
die-hards.)

Further, user's should have a say in this, too.  Do you think it's
acceptable to tell them  "Use `TERM=dumb make check' if you don't
want colorized output, or pipe output through `cat'"?  Or should
we have (gasp!) yet another configure switch, --disable-color-tests?

Comments appreciated.

Cheers,
Ralf