I find boring to wait to run all the tests while I'm focusing on a single one or few ones. Thus I decided to hack pake simpletest task to accept test group selection.

1st step:

In your Pake tasks folder (eg.: /usr/share/pear/pake/tasks) edit the pakeSimpletestTask.class.php file

public static function call_simpletest($task, $type = 'text', $dirs = array(), $test_file = null)

and add this few lines replacing the single line 48

if (!$test_file) {
    $files = pakeFinder::type('file')->name('*Test.php')->in($test_dirs);
}
else {
    $files = pakeFinder::type('file')->name($test_file)->in($test_dirs);
}

This way you are making your pake test task able to accept "hints" about which file to load in the test folder.

2nd step:

Open the sfPakeTest.php file in your symfony/tasks folder and do the following: Add

$test_file = null;
if (count($args) > 1)
{
    $test_file = $args[1];
}

at line 14, then change last line into

pakeSimpletestTask::call_simpletest($task, 'text', $dirs_to_test, $test_file);

That's all.

Now you can launch symfony test <app_name> <test_filename> and have this only executed with no loss of time. You can even use wildcards!!! For example: symfont test myportal *ValidatorTest.php It will execute all the tests named with that pattern in your test/myportal folder.

Super confortable testing at last! Test driven programming requires very flexible test groups approach and this could be a small contribution. Hope it helps. Bye!

select_date_tag is not available in 'rich' version. Waiting for a real enhancement, this is my workaround.

This is the RichDateHelper.php file:

<?php
 
use_helper('Form');
 
function rich_select_date_tag($name, $value = null, $options = array(), $html_options = array()) {
 
    $context = sfContext::getInstance();
  if (isset($options['culture']))
  {
    $culture = $options['culture'];
    unset($options['culture']);
  }
  else
  {
    $culture = $context->getUser()->getCulture();
  }
 
    // register our javascripts and stylesheets
  $langFile = '/sf/js/calendar/lang/calendar-'.strtolower(substr($culture, 0, 2));
  $jss = array(
    '/sf/js/calendar/calendar',
    is_readable(sfConfig::get('sf_symfony_data_dir').'/web/'.$langFile.'.js') ? $langFile : '/sf/js/calendar/lang/calendar-en',
    '/sf/js/calendar/calendar-setup',
  );
  foreach ($jss as $js)
  {
    $context->getResponse()->addJavascript($js);
  }
 
  $js = '
        function updateSelect(cal) {
            var date = cal.date;
            var selectMonth = document.getElementById("'.get_id_from_name($name).'_month");
            selectMonth.selectedIndex = date.getMonth();
            var selectDay = document.getElementById("'.get_id_from_name($name).'_day");
            selectDay.selectedIndex = (date.getDate() - 1);
            var selectYear = document.getElementById("'.get_id_from_name($name).'_year");
            selectYear.selectedIndex = (date.getFullYear() - '.$options['year_start'].');
        }
    document.getElementById("trigger_'.$name.'").disabled = false;
    Calendar.setup({
            inputField : "'.$name.'_rich_sel_date",
            ifFormat : "%Y-%m-%d",
            button : "trigger_'.$name.'",
            singleClick : true,
            onUpdate : updateSelect,
            showsTime : false,
            range : ['.$options['year_start'].', '.$options['year_end'].'],
            showOthers : false,
            cache : 1,
            weekNumbers : false,
            firstDay : 1
    });
  ';
 
    $html = select_date_tag($name, $value, $options, $html_options);
 
  // calendar button
  $calendar_button = '...';
  $calendar_button_type = 'txt';
  if (isset($options['calendar_button_img']))
  {
    $calendar_button = $options['calendar_button_img'];
    $calendar_button_type = 'img';
    unset($options['calendar_button_img']);
  }
  else if (isset($options['calendar_button_txt']))
  {
    $calendar_button = $options['calendar_button_txt'];
    $calendar_button_type = 'txt';
    unset($options['calendar_button_txt']);
  }
 
  if ($calendar_button_type == 'img')
  {
    $html .= image_tag($calendar_button, array('id' => 'trigger_'.$name, 'style' => 'cursor: pointer'));
  }
  else
  {
    $html .= content_tag('button', $calendar_button, array('type' => 'button', 'disabled' => 'disabled', 'onclick' => 'return false', 'id' => 'trigger_'.$name));
  }
 
  // add javascript
  $html .= content_tag('script', $js, array('type' => 'text/javascript'));
  $html .= '<div id="'.$name.'_rich_sel_date" style="display: inline;"></div>';
 
  return $html;
}

We wanted to use a 'propel-insert-sql' in our acceptance tests suite to clear DB before every test reducing interferences. We all learned here http://www.symfony-project.com/snippets/snippet/16 how to call a Pake task from our PHP code. To get a quiet 'propel-insert-sql' task letting 'test' task be verbose and reporting test results we must add a method to the pakeTask class in pakeTask.class.php file:

public function setVerbose() 
{
  $this->verbose = false;
}

and edit sfPakePropel.php file to make 'propel-insert-sql' task quiet:

function run_propel_insert_sql($task, $args)
{
  $task->setVerbose();
  _call_phing($task, 'insert-sql');
}

This way we have a lot quiter acceptance test suite and a clean DB whenever we want.