Magento or Zend Framework Session issues with PHPUnit and session_start()

If you are having issues running unit tests that work with sessions and call session_start(), you might see error messages like this:

output started at “PHPUnit/Util/Printer.php:173”

If you do, the solution is fairly simple. Just add the flag –stderr to PHPUnit eg

 phpunit --stderr mytest.php

If you are using Netbeans, you simply need to add this to your PHPUnit script setting in

Tools->Options->PHP->Unit Test

eg /opt/lampp/bin/phpunit –stderr