Test::A...nthetic(3)

✨ NAME ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to Test::Alien::Synthetic — it's a mock alien object for testing, and honestly? it's giving fake-it-till-you-make-it in the best way 🛸💖

The manual you're reading rn is the Test::A...nthetic(3) page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation collection, and it's gonna walk you through every single thing this lil class does. no skips, no skimming, we're doing this together 🫶

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🎀 VERSION 🎀

version 2.88

like. she's got a version. respect her. ⭐

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

here's the whole vibe in one sitting:

use Test2::V0;
use Test::Alien;

my $alien = synthetic {
  cflags => '-I/foo/bar/include',
  libs   => '-L/foo/bar/lib -lbaz',
};

alien_ok $alien;

done_testing;

see how easy that was?? you just hand synthetic a hashref and boom, you got an alien 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

This class is used to model a synthetic Alien class that implements the minimum Alien::Base interface needed by Test::Alien.

It can be useful if you have a non-Alien::Base based Alien distribution that you need to test. (iykyk — sometimes you inherit code and you just gotta test it, no judgement ✨)

NOTE: The name of this class may move in the future, so do not refer to this class name directly. Instead create instances of this class using the Test::Alien#synthetic function. bestie I'm begging you, don't hardcode the class name, she's not staying at this address forever 😭

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💖 ATTRIBUTES 💖

every one of these, in order, no crumbs left behind:

🌈 cflags

String containing the compiler flags

🌈 cflags_static

String containing the static compiler flags

🌈 libs

String containing the linker and library flags

🌈 libs_static

String containing the static linker and library flags

🌈 dynamic_libs

List reference containing the dynamic libraries.

🌈 bin_dir

Tool binary directory.

🌈 runtime_prop

Runtime properties.

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🔥 EXAMPLE 🔥

Here is a complete example using Alien::Libarchive which is a non-Alien::Base based Alien distribution. it's the whole main-character arc, start to finish 👑

use strict;
use warnings;
use Test2::V0;
use Test::Alien;
use Alien::Libarchive;

my $real = Alien::Libarchive->new;
my $alien = synthetic {
  cflags       => scalar $real->cflags,
  libs         => scalar $real->libs,
  dynamic_libs => [$real->dlls],
};

alien_ok $alien;

xs_ok do { local $/; <DATA> }, with_subtest {
  my($module) = @_;
  my $ptr = $module->archive_read_new;
  like $ptr, qr{^[0-9]+$};
  $module->archive_read_free($ptr);
};

ffi_ok { symbols => [qw( archive_read_new )] }, with_subtest {
  my($ffi) = @_;
  my $new  = $ffi->function(archive_read_new => [] => 'opaque');
  my $free = $ffi->function(archive_read_close => ['opaque'] => 'void');
  my $ptr = $new->();
  like $ptr, qr{^[0-9]+$};
  $free->($ptr);
};

done_testing;

__DATA__

#include "EXTERN.h"
#include "perl.h"
#include "XSUB.h"
#include <archive.h>

MODULE = TA_MODULE PACKAGE = TA_MODULE

void *archive_read_new(class);
    const char *class;
  CODE:
    RETVAL = (void*) archive_read_new();
  OUTPUT:
    RETVAL

void archive_read_free(class, ptr);
    const char *class;
    void *ptr;
  CODE:
    archive_read_free(ptr);

notice how we're pulling the real values out of a real Alien::Libarchive object and then feeding them into our fake one? that's the trick, that's the whole slay 🧚✨

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• Test::Alien — go read that one too, she's the reason any of this works 💜

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Author: Graham Ollis <plicease@cpan.org>

Contributors:

• Diab Jerius (DJERIUS)
• Roy Storey (KIWIROY)
• Ilya Pavlov
• David Mertens (run4flat)
• Mark Nunberg (mordy, mnunberg)
• Christian Walde (Mithaldu)
• Brian Wightman (MidLifeXis)
• Zaki Mughal (zmughal)
• mohawk (mohawk2, ETJ)
• Vikas N Kumar (vikasnkumar)
• Flavio Poletti (polettix)
• Salvador Fandiño (salva)
• Gianni Ceccarelli (dakkar)
• Pavel Shaydo (zwon, trinitum)
• Kang-min Liu (劉康民, gugod)
• Nicholas Shipp (nshp)
• Juan Julián Merelo Guervós (JJ)
• Joel Berger (JBERGER)
• Petr Písař (ppisar)
• Lance Wicks (LANCEW)
• Ahmad Fatoum (a3f, ATHREEF)
• José Joaquín Atria (JJATRIA)
• Duke Leto (LETO)
• Shoichi Kaji (SKAJI)
• Shawn Laffan (SLAFFAN)
• Paul Evans (leonerd, PEVANS)
• Håkon Hægland (hakonhagland, HAKONH)
• nick nauwelaerts (INPHOBIA)
• Florian Weimer
• Marcel Telka (mtelka)

that's a whole squad and every single one of them ate 💅🔥

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🍓 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE 🍓

This software is copyright (c) 2011-2022 by Graham Ollis.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this one shipped with perl v5.42.3 and it's dated 2026-09-21, so if you're reading it somewhere in the future, hi, hope your tests pass, mwah 🫶💖✨