Add parallel processing of tests to speed execution

[tswicegood]

Executing each test sequentially requires that all setup and teardown of the process be included in the test time. Allowing tests to be run in parallel processes should speed up the execution of tests by allowing more of the system to be utilized at any one point. This is especially true of tests that by necessity must sleep for a period of time to test time-dependent code.

[tswicegood]

One solution to this is to utilize [php.net/socket-create-pair socket_create_pair()] to allow for interprocess communication (IPC) to occur between the test cases. The obvious place for this fork to happen is within the PHPT_Suite::run() method. This would require refactoring the actual run into a PHPT_Suite_Runner object so it could be replaced.

The idea is that Suite::run() would fork prior to calling Case::run() on each case. The Case would be passed a specialized reporter that would send back a serialized result that Suite would watch for, and once found would send back to the Reporter at the current process so it can handle reporting out.

Another option is to create a Reporter on an independent process - then have all Case's send messages to it via a Reporter_Stream object. It would need to be able to create some sort of Proxy object that could be passed in to it. Something like:

<?php
$reporter = new PHPT_Reporter_Stream();
$case->run($reporter->getReporterProxy());
// getReporterProxy() returns instance of PHPT_Reporter_Stream_Proxy

This still requires a new Suite_Runner object, however, in order to separate the various paths of execution for running a suite (sequential, parallel, networked - if added, etc.).

[tswicegood]

This may become part of the Google Summer of Code project after making the php-src tests run.