today I was using Apache-Test to write some tests for new mod_auth_digest.c code I was working on. while the tests worked just fine, the new code was meant to excercise a bogus Digest implementation in MSIE so I felt I ought to actually use MSIE to test my changes.
in case you didn't know it, Apache-Test allows you to start up the server with your test config and leave it running. so, instead of copying my test config and files over to my /usr/local/apache/ installation, I just started up the test server and hit against it with the browser.
$ t/TEST -start /apache/2.1/prefork/perl-5.8.3/bin/httpd -d /src/digest-test/t -f /src/digest-test/t/conf/httpd.conf -D APACHE2 -D PERL_USEITHREADS using Apache/2.1.0-dev (prefork MPM) waiting 60 seconds for server to start: .. waiting 60 seconds for server to start: ok (waited 1 secs) server localhost.localdomain:8529 started
[ some browser-based tests ]
$ t/TEST -stop [warning] server localhost.localdomain:8529 shutdown
Listen directive in t/conf/httpd.conf from localhost to the actual IP of the host. but short of that, using the -start feature was a great way to interactively hit my test environment without a lot of fuss. more importantly (for me, anyway) is that I didn't need to mess with my "production" install to add another depth to my testing, which further reduces the number of production changes. sweet.