3 This directory contains the test suite for notmuch.
5 When fixing bugs or enhancing notmuch, you are strongly encouraged to
6 add tests in this directory to cover what you are trying to fix or
11 The test system itself requires:
13 - bash(1) version 4.0 or newer
15 Without bash 4.0+ the tests just refuse to run.
17 Some tests require external dependencies to run. Without them, they
18 will be skipped, or (rarely) marked failed. Please install these, so
19 that you know if you break anything.
30 If your system lacks these tools or have older, non-upgradable versions
31 of these, please (possibly compile and) install these to some other
32 path, for example /usr/local/bin or /opt/gnu/bin. Then prepend the
33 chosen directory to your PATH before running the tests.
35 e.g. env PATH=/opt/gnu/bin:$PATH make test
37 For FreeBSD you need to install latest gdb from ports or packages and
38 provide path to it in TEST_GDB environment variable before executing
39 the tests, native FreeBSD gdb does not not work. If you install
40 coreutils, which provides GNU versions of basic utils like 'date' and
41 'base64' on FreeBSD, the test suite will use these instead of the
42 native ones. This provides robustness against portability issues with
43 these system tools. Most often the tests are written, reviewed and
44 tested on Linux system so such portability issues arise from time to
49 The easiest way to run tests is to say "make test", (or simply run the
50 notmuch-test script). Either command will run all available tests.
52 Alternately, you can run a specific subset of tests by simply invoking
53 one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./T*-search.sh,
54 ./T*-reply.sh, etc). Note that you will probably want "make test-binaries"
55 before running individual tests.
57 The following command-line options are available when running tests:
60 This may help the person who is developing a new test.
61 It causes the command defined with test_debug to run.
64 This causes the test to immediately exit upon the first
68 Execute notmuch with valgrind and exit with status
69 126 on errors (just like regular tests, this will only stop
70 the test script when running under -i). Valgrind errors
71 go to stderr, so you might want to pass the -v option, too.
73 Since it makes no sense to run the tests with --valgrind and
74 not see any output, this option implies --verbose. For
75 convenience, it also implies --tee.
78 In addition to printing the test output to the terminal,
79 write it to files named 't/test-results/$TEST_NAME.out'.
80 As the names depend on the tests' file names, it is safe to
81 run the tests with this option in parallel.
83 When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
84 can be specified as follows:
86 make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
88 You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
89 the tests in one of the following ways.
91 TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
92 TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./T*-emacs.sh
93 make test TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
95 Some tests may require a c compiler. You can choose the name and flags similarly
98 make test TEST_CC=gcc TEST_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
102 If either the moreutils or GNU "parallel" utility is available all
103 tests will be run in parallel. If the NOTMUCH_TEST_SERIALIZE variable
104 is non-null all tests will be executed sequentially.
108 Normally, when new script starts and when test PASSes you get a message
109 printed on screen. This printing can be disabled by setting the
110 NOTMUCH_TEST_QUIET variable to a non-null value. Message on test
111 failures and skips are still printed.
115 If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
116 by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
121 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
123 Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
124 (or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
125 search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
127 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
129 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
130 items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
131 remaining tests to be unaffected.
133 Currently we do not consider skipped tests as build failures. For
134 maximum robustness, when setting up automated build processes, you
135 should explicitly skip tests, rather than relying on notmuch's
136 detection of missing prerequisites. In the future we may treat tests
137 unable to run because of missing prerequisites, but not explicitly
138 skipped by the user, as failures.
140 Testing installed notmuch
141 -------------------------
143 Systems integrators (e.g. Linux distros) may wish to test an installed
144 version of notmuch. This can be done be running
146 $ NOTMUCH_TEST_INSTALLED=1 ./test/notmuch-test
148 In this scenario the test suite does not assume a built tree, and in
149 particular cannot rely on the output of 'configure'. You may want to
150 set certain feature environment variables ('NOTMUCH_HAVE_*') directly
151 if you know those apply to your installed notmuch). Consider also
152 setting TERM=dumb if the value of TERM cannot be used (e.g. in a
153 chroot with missing terminfo). Note that having a built tree may cause
154 surprising/broken results for NOTMUCH_TEST_INSTALLED, so consider
159 The test script is written as a shell script. It is to be named as
160 Tddd-testname.sh where 'ddd' is three digits and 'testname' the "bare"
161 name of your test. Tests will be run in order the 'ddd' part determines.
163 The test script should start with the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash"
164 and an assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
168 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
170 This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
171 given the option --frotz.'
175 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
176 test-lib.sh like this:
178 . ./test-lib.sh || exit 1
180 This test harness library does the following things:
182 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
183 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
185 - Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
186 mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
187 sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
188 test/tmp.<test-basename>. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
189 NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
190 in MAIL_DIR variable.
192 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
193 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
194 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
195 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
199 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
200 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
205 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
206 library for your script to use.
208 test_begin_subtest <message>
210 Set the test description message for a subsequent test_expect_*
211 invocation (see below).
213 test_expect_success <script>
215 This takes a string as parameter, and evaluates the
216 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
219 test_expect_code <code> <script>
221 This takes two strings as parameter, and evaluates the <script>.
222 If it yields <code> exit status, test is considered successful.
224 test_subtest_known_broken
226 Mark the current test as broken. Such tests are expected to fail.
227 Unlike the normal tests, which say "PASS" on success and "FAIL" on
228 failure, these will say "FIXED" on success and "BROKEN" on failure.
229 Failures from these tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop. A
230 test must call this before any test_expect_* function.
232 test_expect_equal <output> <expected>
234 This is an often-used convenience function built on top of
235 test_expect_success. It uses the message from the last
236 test_begin_subtest call, so call before calling
237 test_expect_equal. This function generates a successful test if
238 both the <output> and <expected> strings are identical. If not, it
239 will generate a failure and print the difference of the two
242 test_expect_equal_file <file1> <file2>
244 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that <file1> and <file2>
245 are files instead of strings. This is a much more robust method to
246 compare formatted textual information, since it also notices
247 whitespace and closing newline differences.
249 test_expect_equal_json <output> <expected>
251 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that the two strings are
252 treated as JSON and canonicalized before equality testing. This is
253 useful to abstract away from whitespace differences in the expected
254 output and that generated by running a notmuch command.
258 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
259 when the test script is started with --debug command line
260 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
261 development of a new test script.
263 test_emacs <emacs-lisp-expressions>
265 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
266 emacs. The script can be a sequence of emacs lisp expressions,
267 (that is, they will be evaluated within a progn form). Emacs
268 stdout and stderr is not available, the common way to get output
269 is to save it to a file. There are some auxiliary functions
270 useful in emacs tests provided in test-lib.el. Do not use `setq'
271 for setting variables in Emacs tests because it affects other
272 tests that may run in the same Emacs instance. Use `let' instead
273 so the scope of the changed variables is limited to a single test.
275 test_emacs_expect_t <emacs-lisp-expressions>
277 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
278 emacs in a manner similar to 'test_emacs'. The expressions should
279 return the value `t' to indicate that the test has passed. If the
280 test does not return `t' then it is considered failed and all data
281 returned by the test is reported to the tester.
285 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
286 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
287 exit with an appropriate error code.
289 There are also a number of notmuch-specific auxiliary functions and
290 variables which are useful in writing tests:
294 Generates a message with an optional template. Most tests will
295 actually prefer to call add_message. See below.
299 Generate a message and add it to the database (by calling "notmuch
300 new"). It is sufficient to simply call add_message with no
301 arguments if you don't care about the content of the message. If
302 more control is needed, arguments can be provide to specify many
303 different header values for the new message. See the documentation
304 within test-lib.sh or refer to many example calls within existing
309 This function should be called at the beginning of a test file
310 when a test needs to operate on a non-empty body of messages. It
311 will initialize the mail database to a known state of 50 sample
312 messages, (culled from the early history of the notmuch mailing
315 notmuch_counter_reset
316 $notmuch_counter_command
317 notmuch_counter_value
319 These allow to count how many times notmuch binary is called.
320 notmuch_counter_reset() function generates a script that counts
321 how many times it is called and resets the counter to zero. The
322 function sets $notmuch_counter_command variable to the path to the
323 generated script that should be called instead of notmuch to do
324 the counting. The notmuch_counter_value() function prints the
325 current counter value.
327 There are also functions which remove various environment-dependent
328 values from notmuch output; these are useful to ensure that test
329 results remain consistent across different machines.
331 notmuch_search_sanitize
332 notmuch_show_sanitize
333 notmuch_show_sanitize_all
334 notmuch_json_show_sanitize
336 All these functions should receive the text to be sanitized as the
337 input of a pipe, e.g.
338 output=`notmuch search "..." | notmuch_search_sanitize`