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- The Automake test suite
- User interface
- ==============
- Running the tests
- -----------------
- To run all tests:
- make -k check
- By default, verbose output of a test 't/foo.sh' or 't/foo.tap' is retained
- in the log file 't/foo.log'. Also, a summary log is created in the file
- 'test-suite.log' (in the top-level directory).
- You can use '-jN' for faster completion (it even helps on a uniprocessor
- system, due to unavoidable sleep delays, as noted below):
- make -k -j4
- To rerun only failed tests:
- make -k recheck
- To run only tests that are newer than their last results:
- make -k check RECHECK_LOGS=
- To run only selected tests:
- make -k check TESTS="t/foo.sh t/bar.tap" (GNU make)
- env TESTS="t/foo.sh t/bar.tap" make -e -k check (non-GNU make)
- To run the tests in cross-compilation mode, you should first configure
- the automake source tree to a cross-compilation setup. For example, to
- run with a Linux-to-MinGW cross compiler, you will need something like
- this:
- ./configure --host i586-mingw32msvc --build i686-pc-linux-gnu
- To avoid possible spurious error, you really have to *explicitly* specify
- '--build' in addition to '--host'; the 'lib/config.guess' script can help
- determine the correct value to pass to '--build'.
- Then you can just run the testsuite in the usual way, and the test cases
- using a compiler should automatically use a cross-compilation setup.
- Interpretation
- --------------
- Successes:
- PASS - success
- XFAIL - expected failure
- Failures:
- FAIL - failure
- XPASS - unexpected success
- Other:
- SKIP - skipped tests (third party tools not available)
- ERROR - some unexpected error condition
- About the tests
- ---------------
- There are two kinds of tests in the Automake testsuite (both implemented
- as shell scripts). The scripts with the '.sh' suffix are "simple"
- tests, their outcome completely determined by their exit status. Those
- with the '.tap' suffix use the TAP protocol.
- If you want to run a test by hand, you should be able to do so using the
- 'runtest' script provided in the Automake distribution:
- ./runtest t/nogzip.sh
- ./runtest t/add-missing.tap
- This will run the test using the correct shell, and should also work in
- VPATH builds. Note that, to run the TAP tests this way, you'll need to
- have the prove(1) utility available in $PATH.
- Supported shells
- ----------------
- By default, the tests are run by a proper shell detected at configure
- time. Here is how you can run the tests with a different shell, say
- '/bin/my-sh':
- # Running through the makefile test driver.
- make check AM_TEST_RUNNER_SHELL=/bin/my-sh (GNU make)
- AM_TEST_RUNNER_SHELL=/bin/my-sh make -e check (non-GNU make)
- # Run a test directly from the command line.
- AM_TEST_RUNNER_SHELL=/bin/my-sh ./runtest t/foo.sh
- The test scripts are written with portability in mind, and should run
- with any decent POSIX shell. However, it is worth nothing that older
- versions of Zsh (pre-4.3) exhibited several bugs and incompatibilities
- with our uses, and are thus not supported for running Automake's test
- scripts.
- Reporting failures
- ------------------
- Send verbose output, i.e., the contents of test-suite.log, of failing
- tests to <bug-automake@gnu.org>, along with the usual version numbers
- (which Automake, which Autoconf, which operating system, which make
- version, which shell, etc.)
- Writing test cases
- ==================
- * If you plan to fix a bug, write the test case first. This way you'll
- make sure the test catches the bug, and that it succeeds once you have
- fixed the bug.
- * Add a copyright/license paragraph.
- * Explain what the test does, i.e., which features it checks, which
- invariants it verifies, or what bugs/issues it guard against.
- * Cite the PR number (if any), and the original reporter (if any), so
- we can find or ask for information if needed.
- * If a test checks examples or idioms given in the documentation, make
- sure the documentation reference them appropriately in comments, as
- with:
- @c Keep in sync with autodist-config-headers.sh
- @example
- ...
- @end example
- * Use "required=..." for required tools. Do not explicitly require
- tools which can be taken for granted because they're listed in the
- GNU Coding Standards (for example, 'gzip').
- * Include 'test-init.sh' in every test script (see existing tests for
- examples of how to do this).
- * Use the 'skip_' function to skip tests, with a meaningful message if
- possible. Where convenient, use the 'warn_' function to print generic
- warnings, the 'fail_' function for test failures, and the 'fatal_'
- function for hard errors. In case a hard error is due to a failed
- set-up of a test scenario, you can use the 'framework_fail_' function
- instead.
- * For those tests checking the Automake-provided test harnesses that
- are expected to work also when the 'serial-tests' Automake option
- is used (thus causing the serial testsuite harness to be used in the
- generated Makefile), place a line containing "try-with-serial-tests"
- somewhere in the file (usually in a comment).
- That will ensure that the 'gen-testsuite-part' script generates a
- sibling of that test which uses the serial harness instead of the
- parallel one. For those tests that are *not* meant to work with the
- parallel testsuite harness at all (these should be very very few),
- set the shell variable 'am_serial_tests' to "yes" before including
- test-init.sh.
- * Some tests in the Automake testsuite are auto-generated; those tests
- might have custom extensions, but their basename (that is, with such
- extension stripped) is expected to end with "-w" string, optionally
- followed by decimal digits. For example, the name of a valid
- auto-generated test can be 'color-w.sh' or 'tap-signal-w09.tap'.
- Please don't name hand-written tests in a way that could cause them
- to be confused with auto-generated tests; for example, 'u-v-w.sh'
- or 'option-w0.tap' are *not* valid name for hand-written tests.
- * test-init.sh brings in some commonly required files, and sets a skeleton
- configure.ac. If possible, append to this file. In some cases you'll
- have to overwrite it, but this should be the exception. Note that
- configure.ac registers Makefile.in but do not output anything by
- default. If you need ./configure to create Makefile, append AC_OUTPUT
- to configure.ac. In case you don't want your test directory to be
- pre-populate by test-init.sh (this should be a rare occurrence), set
- the 'am_create_testdir' shell variable to "empty" before sourcing
- test-init.sh.
- * By default, the testcases are run with the errexit shell flag on,
- to make it easier to catch failures you might not have thought of.
- If this is undesirable in some testcase, you can use "set +e" to
- disable the errexit flag (but please do so only if you have a very
- good reason).
- * End the test script with a ':' command. Otherwise, when somebody
- changes the test by adding a failing command after the last command,
- the test will spuriously fail because '$?' is nonzero at the end.
- Note that this is relevant even if the errexit shell flag is on, in
- case the test contains commands like "grep ... Makefile.in && exit 1"
- (and there are indeed a lot of such tests).
- * Use $ACLOCAL, $AUTOMAKE, $AUTOCONF, $AUTOUPDATE, $AUTOHEADER,
- $PERL, $MAKE, $EGREP, and $FGREP, instead of the corresponding
- commands.
- * When you want to redirect the output from a make invocation, use the
- 'run_make' function rather than calling $MAKE directly. Not only is
- this more idiomatic, but it also avoid possible spurious racy failures
- when the make invocations in the testsuite are run in parallel mode
- (as with "make check AM_TESTSUITE_MAKE='make -j4"').
- * Do not override Makefile variables using make arguments, as in e.g.:
- $MAKE prefix=/opt install # BAD
- This is not portable for recursive targets (with non-GNU make,
- targets that call a sub-make may not pass "prefix=/opt" along).
- Instead, use the 'run_make' function, which automatically uses
- the AM_MAKEFLAGS to propagate the variable definitions along to
- sub-make:
- run_make prefix=/opt install # GOOD
- * Use '$sleep' when you have to make sure that some file is newer
- than another.
- * Use cat or grep or similar commands to display (part of) files that
- may be interesting for debugging, so that when a user send a verbose
- output we don't have to ask him for more details. Display stderr
- output on the stderr file descriptor. If some redirected command is
- likely to fail, display its output even in the failure case, before
- exiting.
- * Use '$PATH_SEPARATOR', not hard-coded ':', as the separator of
- PATH's entries.
- * It's more important to make sure that a feature works, than make
- sure that Automake's output looks correct. It might look correct
- and still fail to work. In other words, prefer running 'make' over
- grepping Makefile.in (or do both).
- * If you run $ACLOCAL, $AUTOMAKE or $AUTOCONF several times in the
- same test and change configure.ac by the meantime, do
- rm -rf autom4te*.cache
- before the following runs. On fast machines the new configure.ac
- could otherwise have the same timestamp as the old autom4te.cache.
- * Use filenames with two consecutive spaces when testing that some
- code preserves filenames with spaces. This will catch errors like
- `echo $filename | ...`.
- * Make sure your test script can be used to faithfully check an
- installed version of automake (as with "make installcheck"). For
- example, if you need to copy or grep an automake-provided script,
- do not assume that they can be found in the '$top_srcdir/lib'
- directory, but use '$am_scriptdir' instead. The complete list of
- such "$am_...dir" variables can be found in the 't/ax/test-defs.in'
- file.
- * When writing input for lex, include the following in the definitions
- section:
- %{
- #define YY_NO_UNISTD_H 1
- %}
- to accommodate non-ANSI systems, since GNU flex generates code that
- includes unistd.h otherwise. Also add:
- int isatty (int fd) { return 0; }
- to the definitions section if the generated code is to be compiled
- by a C++ compiler, for similar reasons (i.e., the isatty(3) function
- from that same unistd.h header would be required otherwise).
- * Add any new test to handwritten_TESTS in 't/list-of-tests.mk', and
- to XFAIL_TESTS in addition if needed (that is, if the test is expected
- to fail).
- * In test scripts, prefer using POSIX constructs over their old
- Bourne-only equivalents:
- - use $(...), not `...`, for command substitution;
- - use $((...)), not `expr ...`, for arithmetic processing;
- - liberally use '!' to invert the exit status of a command, e.g.,
- in idioms like "if ! CMD; then ...", instead of relying on clumsy
- paraphrases like "if CMD; then :; else ...".
- - prefer use of ${param%pattern} and ${param#pattern} parameter
- expansions over processing by 'sed' or 'expr'.
- * Note however that, when writing Makefile recipes or shell code in a
- configure.ac, you should still use `...` instead, because the Autoconf
- generated configure scripts do not ensure they will find a truly POSIX
- shell (even though they will prefer and use it *if* it's found).
- * Do not test an Automake error with "$AUTOMAKE && exit 1", or in three
- years we'll discover that this test failed for some other bogus reason.
- This happened many times. Better use something like
- AUTOMAKE_fails
- grep 'expected diagnostic' stderr
- Note this doesn't prevent the test from failing for another reason,
- but at least it makes sure the original error is still here.
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