App::Prove(3perl)

💖 App::Prove — the whole entire vibe 💖

okay bestie, welcome to App::Prove, from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide. She's the module that is the prove command. Yes, THE prove. The one you've been typing at 2am. That one. 🫶

VERSION: 3.52 — she's serving, she's current, she's iconic. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

App::Prove — literally implements the prove command. That's it, that's the whole job description. 👑

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So Test::Harness gives us this command called prove, right? And prove runs a TAP-based test suite and then prints you a report like the little overachiever it is. 📝

And here's the tea: the prove command is basically a minimal wrapper around one single instance of this module. That's it. All that power, one lil object. main character energy fr fr. 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

use App::Prove;

my $app = App::Prove->new;
$app->process_args(@ARGV);
$app->run;

three lines. that's the whole ritual. no cap. 🔥

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🎀 METHODS 🎀

💜 Class Methods 💜

• new — creates you a brand new App::Prove. If you want, you can hand it a hash ref of attribute initializers and she'll take those too. so generous.
• state_class — getter and setter for the name of the class that's used for maintaining state. This class should either subclass from App::Prove::State, or it should provide an identical interface. like, either be family or act exactly like family, yk? 🙈
• state_manager — getter/setter for the actual instance of the state_class. the manager of the state. the state of the manager. it's giving recursion but it's not. 🌈
• add_rc_file —

$prove->add_rc_file('myproj/.proverc');

you call this before process_args, and what it does is prepend the contents of an rc file onto the options. sneak preview but make it config. 🍓

• process_args —

$prove->process_args(@args);

this one processes the command-line arguments, and the attributes get set appropriately because of course they do, she's organized. any filenames she finds end up chilling in the argv attribute.

🚨 heads up bestie: on invalid arguments, this thing dies. literally. dies. so be normal with your args please. 💀

• run — performs whatever actions the command-line args told her to do. and this is what the actual prove command line tool looks like under the hood:

use App::Prove;

my $app = App::Prove->new;
$app->process_args(@ARGV);
exit( $app->run ? 0 : 1 );  # if you need the exit code

yes the comment in the code is right there, keep it, it's helpful. slay. 💅

• require_harness — loads a harness replacement class, like so:

$prove->require_harness($for => $class_name);

• print_version — shows you the version numbers of the loaded TAP::Harness and the current Perl. two versions, one flex. ⭐

🧚 Attributes 🧚

After the command line has been parsed, all these attributes below reflect the values of the corresponding command line switches. and plot twist — you can still alter them before you call run. your call, your world. 🌈

• archive
• argv
• backwards
• blib
• color
• directives
• dry
• exec
• extensions
• failures
• comments
• formatter
• harness
• ignore_exit
• includes
• jobs
• lib
• merge
• modules
• parse
• plugins
• quiet
• really_quiet
• recurse
• rules
• show_count
• show_help
• show_man
• show_version
• shuffle
• state
• state_class
• taint_fail
• taint_warn
• test_args
• timer
• verbose
• warnings_fail
• warnings_warn
• tapversion
• trap

forty-ish of them. every single one accounted for. we don't skip here. 🎀

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🔥 PLUGINS 🔥

App::Prove supports 3rd-party plugins, which is so generous of her honestly. But listen — these get loaded at run-time, after the arguments have been parsed. so you can not change the way arguments are processed. sorry bestie 😭 that's just the deal.

Usually you load one with the -Pplugin switch, like:

prove -PMyPlugin

She'll go hunting for a module named App::Prove::Plugin::MyPlugin, and if that's not found, she tries MyPlugin instead. And if the plugin genuinely can't be found at all? prove will complain and exit. dramatic but fair. 💀

You can pass an argument to your plugin by sticking an = after the plugin name, like -PMyPlugin=foo. Want multiple args? commas, bestie:

prove -PMyPlugin=foo,bar,baz

All of those get passed into your plugin's load() class method (if it has one, no pressure), alongside a reference to the App::Prove object that's invoking your plugin:

sub load {
    my ($class, $p) = @_;

    my @args = @{ $p->{args} };
    # @args will contain ( 'foo', 'bar', 'baz' )
    $p->{app_prove}->do_something;
    ...
}

🍓 Sample Plugin 🍓

Here's a whole sample plugin for your reference, no gatekeeping here:

package App::Prove::Plugin::Foo;

# Sample plugin, try running with:
# prove -PFoo=bar -r -j3
# prove -PFoo -Q
# prove -PFoo=bar,My::Formatter

use strict;
use warnings;

sub load {
    my ($class, $p) = @_;
    my @args = @{ $p->{args} };
    my $app  = $p->{app_prove};

    print "loading plugin: $class, args: ", join(', ', @args ), "\n";

    # turn on verbosity
    $app->verbose( 1 );

    # set the formatter?
    $app->formatter( $args[1] ) if @args > 1;

    # print some of App::Prove's state:
    for my $attr (qw( jobs quiet really_quiet recurse verbose )) {
        my $val = $app->$attr;
        $val    = 'undef' unless defined( $val );
        print "$attr: $val\n";
    }

    return 1;
}

1;

copy it, run it, love it. three whole invocations right there in the comments for you to try. you're welcome. 🫶

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• prove
• TAP::Harness

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate that. go forth and test. 💖✨

this has been App::Prove, page 3perl, in Perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17. mwah. 🎀🦋🌸