TAP History

Andy Lester thought that the thing we now know as TAP needed a name. (See How TA
P was named) The name is relatively recent but the protocol has been around sinc
e 1988.
Historical Versions
Pulling apart the historical revisions of TAP is difficult both because there wa
s no standard and because t/TEST in the perl core and Test::Harness parse slight
ly different dialects of TAP. Here's the best we can piece together right now. T
his information comes from Sam Villan's historical Perl GIT repository.
Version 1
TAP as understood by Perl 1.0's t/TEST. It understands the basic 1..M header, "o
k #" and "not ok #". No blank lines, directive, garbage lines or anything else i
s understood. This is implemented by t/TEST as part of Perl 1.
commit 840163baa12f7970131f7841c479bccf5be40ba9
Author: Larry Wall <lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: Sat Jan 30 23:00:00 1988 +0000
Version 2
Checks the wait/exit status of each test.
Implemented by Test::Harness in Perl 5.002beta3
commit 4bce96efdcaa480e392138e10166c92c5fc5f22c
Author: Perl 5 Porters <perl5-porters@africa.nicoh.com>
Date: Fri Feb 2 18:52:27 1996 -0800
Version 3
Comment lines beginning with # are ignored. Implemented by Test::Harness in Per
l 5.002beta3 commit 4bce96efdcaa480e392138e10166c92c5fc5f22c Author: Perl 5 Port
ers <perl5-porters@africa.nicoh.com> Date: Fri Feb 2 18:52:27 1996 -0800
Version 4
Adds the "1..0" header for skipping the entire test. Previously it was considere
d a passing test.
This is first implemented by t/TEST as part of Perl 5.003_01 followed ten minute
s later by Test::Harness. commit 845b835a0bd51ac2f83e2e81f4088986d97114ff Autho
r: Perl 5 Porters <perl5-porters@africa.nicoh.com> Date: Mon Jul 8 23:11:22 1996
+0000
Version 5
All non-TAP lines are ignored. Implemented by Test::Harness in Perl 5.003_01. c
ommit ae85fcb6e790acc2343e92002216642e766aa196 Author: Perl 5 Porters <perl5-por
ters@africa.nicoh.com> Date: Mon Jul 8 23:22:00 1996 +0000
Version 6
Support for the skip directive. Added in Test::Harness and allow (but ignored) i

n t/TEST in Perl 5.00455. ``` Change 318: Output skipped test information in tes
t suite: Subject: 5.00455: Making test harness platform_aware Date: Wed, 26 Nov
1997 17:16:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 17:16:55 -0500 (EST) ```
Version 7
In-header "todo" syntax added to Test::Harness in Perl 5.00459. ``` Change 539:
Subject: [PATCH 5.00459] allow the Test::Harness to grok TODO-type tests docs Da
te: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 17:58:01 -0500 From: Joshua Pritikin pritikin@mindspring.co
m ```
Version 8
A reason is added to the skip directive. Added in Test::Harness in Perl 5.00553.
``` Change 3389: From: Ilya Zakharevich ilya@math.ohio-state.edu Date: Mon, 10
May 1999 02:07:01 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: 199905100607.CAA26045@monk.mps.ohio-st
ate.edu Subject: [PATCH 5.00553] Explanations by Test::Harness ```
Version 9
A reason is added to the skip all header. Change 3399: more testsuite smarts (m
any of them courtesy Ilya)
Version 10
Added "Bail Out!" Change 8028: Introduce macros for UTF8 decoding.
Version 11
Added TODO directive. Change 8824: Subject: [PATCH t/TEST lib/Test/Harness.pm]
Adding todo tests From: schwern@pobox.com Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 01:48:50 -0500
Message-ID: <20010218014850.C19957@magnonel.guild.net>
Version 12 (Current version)
Allowed header at end.
Implemented in Test::Harness 1.21.
Version 13
Understands TAP version syntax.
Implemented in TAP::Parser 0.52