TB.Verbose would be unlike all other existing methods on TB, in that it would report a static global value rather than do something different depending on what test or benchmark is running. I know that is exactly what you're asking for, but it's worth noting that it would be a somewhat inconsistent API.

I also wonder why should we add TB.Verbose and not also Short, Coverage, CoverMode, or other global "getter" APIs. Potentially we could end up with quite a bit of duplication across four types - the interface and three implementers.

Finally, I'm a bit confused by the purpose of this proposal, which is to mock the testing package. The testing package already has a mechanism to discourage mocking, like you said. It seems to me like if you want to test a testing library or utility, you need to agree on a small interface to abstract away the testing package, just like you already do for TB. Adding Verbose to that mix, for a total of an extra handful of lines, doesn't seem like a big difference to me :)

There are already much simpler ways to accomplish this.

Instead of

type VerboseReader interface {
  Verbose() bool
}

type verboseReader struct{}

func (verboseReader) Verbose() bool {
  return testing.Verbose()
}

myCode(verboseReader{})

Why not

myCode(testing.Verbose())

?

Or if you really want to pass code and not a value, why not

type verboseReader func() bool

myCode(testing.Verbose)

?

All fair points - in particular, agreed that just passing a func() bool is a perfectly fine (and simpler) way to address this as well. Closing this due to the proposal being superfluous.

For posterity, the idea was less about "this is difficult/impossible to accomplish right now" and more about "it would be convenient to access this as part of a testing.T/testing.B", ideally avoiding adding a dedicated "verbose getter" (or similar) parameter to testing utility functions/libraries that users need to care about.

In retrospect, there are better ways to inject and mask this from users by default - functional options or unexported var function manipulation being among the more obvious ways.

Thanks for the feedback!