max80_fw/tools/gnusrc/automake/t

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 , 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.