title: tools for testing vim plugins
body: <p>I'm looking for some tools for testing vim scripts.  Either vim scripts that</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>do unit/functional testing, or</li>
  <li>classes for some other library (eg Python's <a href="http://docs.python.org/library/unittest.html" rel="noreferrer">unittest</a> module) that make it convenient to
  
  <ul>
  <li>run vim with parameters that cause it to do some tests on its environment, and</li>
  <li>determine from the output whether or not a given test passed.</li>
  </ul></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I'm aware of a couple of vim scripts that do unit testing, but they're sort of vaguely documented and may or may not actually be useful:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1125" rel="noreferrer">vim-unit</a>:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>purports "To provide vim scripts with a simple unit testing framework and tools"</li>
  <li>first and only version (v0.1) was released in 2004</li>
  <li>documentation doesn't mention whether or not it works reliably, other than to state that it is "fare [sic] from finished".</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><a href="http://github.com/c9s/unit-test.vim" rel="noreferrer">unit-test.vim</a>:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>This one also seems pretty experimental, and may not be particularly reliable.</li>
  <li>May have been abandoned or back-shelved: last commit was in 2009-11 (> 6 months ago)</li>
  <li>No tagged revisions have been created (ie no releases)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>So information from people who are using one of those two existent modules, and/or links to other, more clearly usable, options, are very welcome.</p>