Discussion of testing theory and practice, including methodologies (such as TDD, BDD, DDD, Agile, XP) and software - anything to do with testing goes here. (Formerly "The Testing Side of Development")
At the risk of dereailing this thread, how often do you use dump() ? And is dump() something you should run briefly, then delete from the test code, or is it something that's acceptable to leave in the tests? (Assuming the tests will be packaged as part of a project).
I tend to use $this->dump() temporarily, in much the same manner you would use a print_r or var_dump in "old style" programming/bug hunting. Once I know the structure of what I am looking at, I will then throw in the asserts*()s that I want and remove the dump().