why

Author: progrium

README.md

@@ -87,6 +87,27 @@ T_failMultiple() {
 }
 ```
 
+## Why not Bats or shunit2?
+
+Good question. I've used both and enjoyed using them until I got tired of what I didn't like. With Bats these issues bothered me:
+
+ * Useless syntactic sugar making test files require Bats instead of just Bash to process, making Bats more complicated and harder to debug.
+ * The Bats-specific helpers that could be replaced with idiomatic Bash-isms.
+ * Using `set -e` means you have to use the `run` helper for nearly everythng in larger tests.
+ * The multi-file, multi-directory install.
+
+On the plus side, it did take a might more lightweight approach to unit testing. But the issues made me turn to shunit2. It addressed all the above issue, but then I ran into:
+
+ * For what it did and what I used, it was not worth the 1000 lines of overly portable, overly clever shell script.
+ * I had to modify it anyway, and ended up putting it in the source of every project that used it.
+
+Basht might not be for everybody, but I wrote it and use it because:
+
+ * It's written in and made for pure Bash.
+ * It's distributed as a single file binary.
+ * It's only about 50 lines and does everything I need.
+ * It's inspired in design and appearance by Go's testing.
+
 ## License
 
 BSD