[tap-l] Nested TAP

[Ovid]

--- Andy Armstrong <andy at hexten.net> wrote:

> Using it isn't backwards compatible. I /think/ Curtis' idea was to  
> indent the nested block (so it's ignored by current parsers) and  
> provide a summary result for the block - so the whole thing parses  
> correctly with current parsers.

That's correct.  The problem with the current ideas for breaking
backwards compatibility is there's no way for the TAP producer to
downgrade.  If the assumption is that it could be difficult for the
producer to parse the Core TAP out of a stream and produce a summary. 
Consider:

  TAP version 13
  ok 1 - foo
    begin 2 - nested
    1..2
    ok 1 - bar
    not ok 2 - fribble
    end 2 - nested
  not ok 3 - fook

If the TAP consumer (Test::Harness in our case) doesn't say that it
understands TAP v13, the producer has *no* way of downgrading the above
TAP and would be forced to abort -- unless it had a minimal parser
(like my 40 line example which can be made even shorter).  Thus, tests
which *should* pass will now fail.  That violates the entire spirit of
TAP.

Cheers,
Ovid

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