How do common lisp frameworks deal with packages?

[npolyspace]

How can one do unit testing in common lisp?
I started with the unit test framework of practical Common Lisp chapter 9.
As I have needed more features, I have been gradually adding them, but my most recent issue is stumping me.
How can I handle packages?
I have several different packages. How can one write a "deftest" that will take an additional argument specifying what package to use?
Every package has many functions that are not exported, so how does a test function in some other "test" package access non-exported symbols?

At first I thought I might be able to do something like:
(defmacro pdeftest (name package parameters &body body)
`(deftest ,name ,parameters :body (prog1 (progn (in-package ,package) ,@body) (in-package test))))

But this doesn't work, and it doesn't look like this is even an approach that could work. Do any of the test frameworks out there work with packages?

[Goheeca]

I'm not familiar with deftest.
But on the unexported symbol, they can be accessed with double colon:

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package::unexported-symbol

[edgar-rft]

How can one write a "deftest" that will take an additional argument specifying what package to use?

I wouldn't recommend to pass package names as arguments at all.

Usually you define a test-package that uses the respective other package(s), and then you write and run your deftests inside that test-package:

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(defpackage :test-package
  (:use :common-lisp
        :other-package))

(in-package :test-package)

(deftest ...)

:use ther-package will save you from fiddeling with package names as parameters.

Non-exported functions of the other-package can be called from the test-package by using double-colon syntax like this:

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(other-package::non-exported-function ...)

Using double-colon syntax in test-packages is o.k., but it's not a good idea to use non-exported symbols of other packages in public production code.

- edgar

Note to the board administrator: It's extremely annoying that I need to escape :other-package with [color=#000000][/color]ther-package only to make that stupid smiley disappear. Overloading software with so-called "convenience" stuff inevitably leads to bullshit-quality. Please either remove that function or report it as a bug to the author(s) of the forum software. Thank you.

[sinnatagg]

There are several unit test packages for CL. I use one called five-am.

You can import the symbols you need into a separate test package, there is no need to mess up your original package when running tests.

-a