Here at Win-Vector LLC we like permutation tests. Our team has written on them (for example: How Do You Know if Your Data Has Signal?) and they are used to estimate significances in our sigr and WVPlots R packages. For example permutation methods are used to estimate the significance reported in the following ROC plot.
Permutation tests have their own literature and issues (examples: Permutation, Parametric and Bootstrap Tests of Hypotheses, Springer-Verlag, NY, 1994 (3rd edition, 2005), 2, 3, and 4).
In our R packages the permutation tests are estimated by a sampling procedure, and not computed exactly (or deterministically). It turns out this is likely a necessary concession; a complete exact permutation test procedure at scale would be big news. Please read on for my comments on this issue.