Re: Direction for test frameworks: Perl TAP vs. Python/pytest

Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander(at)tigerdata(dot)com> writes:
>> I'm not super attracted to the idea of back-patching a whole new test
>> framework into stable branches. But the alternatives are not pretty
>> either --- eg, who will want to write a python test and then translate
>> it to perl for the back branches?

> That's a fair concern. It seems to me that back-patching TAP tests
> doesn't happen too often. Also modern LLM agents should be quite good
> at it.

I think you're underestimating the frequency with which we back-patch
test changes. Looking just at the v17 branch back to 1 January,
I see four commits that added entirely new *.pl test files, and
another 16 that modified one, plus four more that touched test
infrastructure (*.pm files). So that's nearly 10% of the total
commit traffic in that branch (262 commits). We're going to need
to deal with this on a very regular basis. Maybe we can wave it
all away with "AI will save us", but I've got doubts.

regards, tom lane