pod/perlhacks.pod - document TEST_ARGS and make win32 perl use it too

Win32 has had TEST_SWITCHES and TEST_FILES for ages. Unix has
TEST_ARGS. This extends Win32 to support TEST_ARGS as well. I
havent made the contrary change to the unix code, anyone using
TEST_SWITCHES is already using it on Win32.

1 files changed, 16 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/pod/perlhack.pod b/pod/perlhack.pod
index 3665ba2746..1e8d907ca9 100644
--- a/pod/perlhack.pod
+++ b/pod/perlhack.pod
@@ -880,6 +880,19 @@ it doesn't redirect stderr to stdout.
 Note that under Win32 F<t/harness> is always used instead of F<t/TEST>,
 so there is no special "test_harness" target.
 
+Under the Unix build process you may use the TEST_ARGS and TEST_FILES
+parameters to pass arguments through to the underlying harness call.
+This means that for instance you could do
+
+    make test_harness TEST_ARGS="-v -re pat"
+
+which would make, and then run the test harness in verbose mode over
+files which contain "pat". Or you could do
+
+    make test_harness TEST_ARGS="-torture" TEST_FILES="op/*.t"
+
+and run torture tests on files matching the glob "op/*.t".
+
 Under Win32's "test" target you may use the TEST_SWITCHES and
 TEST_FILES environment variables to control the behaviour of
 F<t/harness>.  This means you can say
@@ -887,6 +900,9 @@ F<t/harness>.  This means you can say
     nmake test TEST_FILES="op/*.t"
     nmake test TEST_SWITCHES="-torture" TEST_FILES="op/*.t"
 
+Note that for compatibility with the unix build process TEST_ARGS
+may also be used instead of the traditional TEST_SWITCHES argument.
+
 =item * test-notty test_notty
 
 Sets PERL_SKIP_TTY_TEST to true before running normal test.