[swift-evolution] [swift-build-dev] [Review] SE-0019 Swift Testing (Package Manager)

[Brent Royal-Gordon]

> 2.  Whether privileging XCTest is in the best interest of the ecosystem.  My informal poll reveals much more debate than I had expected about whether people even want to use XCTest for their programs, and so I think an approach that starts with defining the interface first and wiring XCTest into it second is better for the long-term health of the ecosystem than an approach that starts with XCTest first and invents a separate system for third-party later which we may or may not retrofit XCTest back into.  I think a proposal that takes the latter position should include a reasoned technical justification for that decision.

I have no opinion about this proposal (to be honest, I haven't even used the package manager yet), but let's be careful not to make the perfect the enemy of the good here. If we want testing to be part of the package manager, it's perfectly acceptable for the initial version to rely on XCTest. The interface between SwiftPM and XCTest can then be gradually abstracted and refined until it becomes a generic test harness; then a separate proposal could formalize that interface and add support for alternative test frameworks.

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Brent Royal-Gordon
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