I've always had a soft spot for TAP's output format. It just seems like it has potential for much better debuggability. The concept of a plan alone puts it above xUnit styles in my mind. That and the expectation that each assertion has a descriptive message just makes it's output seem easier to follow.

Christian Neukirchen (the creator of Rack, among other things) created knock[1], a TAP tool for Ruby. It doesn't seem to have developed much a following, though.

[1] https://github.com/chneukirchen/knock

TAP is nice. I think it could use some extensions... but when I handrolled a test program a few years ago, I chose TAP. It... works.

What is TAP?

The Test Anything Protocol: http://testanything.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

One of the frustrating parts of the technology industry is that it moves so damn fast, and people love acronyms. As a result, a new acronym every day.

It looks like an interesting tool, I'll investigate it.

TAP has been the testing protocol for the perl core since the late 80s :)

> As a result, a new acronym every day.

You are being optimistic.