While developing the new test-runner and this SmallLint extension I struggled with SUnit several times. Even-tough there are always ways to subclass and configure it to suit special needs, it gets very soon ugly and cumbersome.
After 3 years of not having touched Java, I decided to have a quick look at JUnit 4 [1] and I must say that they changed a lot to the positive. It makes me sad to see that SUnit still looks more or less the same as the first time I've used it about 4 years ago. We should really try to improve it! Imagine a newbie coming from Java and seeing a testing-framework looks like JUnit 1.0 :-/
Excellent idea. Any taker. I think that the backward compatibility between the dialect is a good idea as soon as it does not get in our way.
So if you have suggestions please say them
A new test runner should be the second step (I've done that already, because the old one was simply causing too much pain), an improved test-model should be the first step! ;-)