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.
29 If your system lacks these tools or have older, non-upgradable versions
30 of these, please (possibly compile and) install these to some other
31 path, for example /usr/local/bin or /opt/gnu/bin. Then prepend the
32 chosen directory to your PATH before running the tests.
34 e.g. env PATH=/opt/gnu/bin:$PATH make test
36 For FreeBSD you need to install latest gdb from ports or packages and
37 provide path to it in TEST_GDB environment variable before executing
38 the tests, native FreeBSD gdb does not not work. If you install
39 coreutils, which provides GNU versions of basic utils like 'date' and
40 'base64' on FreeBSD, the test suite will use these instead of the
41 native ones. This provides robustness against portability issues with
42 these system tools. Most often the tests are written, reviewed and
43 tested on Linux system so such portability issues arise from time to
48 The easiest way to run tests is to say "make test", (or simply run the
49 notmuch-test script). Either command will run all available tests.
51 Alternately, you can run a specific subset of tests by simply invoking
52 one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./T*-search.sh,
53 ./T*-reply.sh, etc). Note that you will probably want "make test-binaries"
54 before running individual tests.
56 The following command-line options are available when running tests:
59 This may help the person who is developing a new test.
60 It causes the command defined with test_debug to run.
63 This causes the test to immediately exit upon the first
67 Execute notmuch with valgrind and exit with status
68 126 on errors (just like regular tests, this will only stop
69 the test script when running under -i). Valgrind errors
70 go to stderr, so you might want to pass the -v option, too.
72 Since it makes no sense to run the tests with --valgrind and
73 not see any output, this option implies --verbose. For
74 convenience, it also implies --tee.
77 In addition to printing the test output to the terminal,
78 write it to files named 't/test-results/$TEST_NAME.out'.
79 As the names depend on the tests' file names, it is safe to
80 run the tests with this option in parallel.
82 When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
83 can be specified as follows:
85 make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
87 You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
88 the tests in one of the following ways.
90 TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
91 TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./T*-emacs.sh
92 make test TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
94 Some tests may require a c compiler. You can choose the name and flags similarly
97 make test TEST_CC=gcc TEST_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
101 If either the moreutils or GNU "parallel" utility is available all
102 tests will be run in parallel. If the NOTMUCH_TEST_SERIALIZE variable
103 is non-null all tests will be executed sequentially.
107 Normally, when new script starts and when test PASSes you get a message
108 printed on screen. This printing can be disabled by setting the
109 NOTMUCH_TEST_QUIET variable to a non-null value. Message on test
110 failures and skips are still printed.
114 If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
115 by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
120 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
122 Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
123 (or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
124 search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
126 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
128 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
129 items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
130 remaining tests to be unaffected.
132 Currently we do not consider skipped tests as build failures. For
133 maximum robustness, when setting up automated build processes, you
134 should explicitly skip tests, rather than relying on notmuch's
135 detection of missing prerequisites. In the future we may treat tests
136 unable to run because of missing prerequisites, but not explicitly
137 skipped by the user, as failures.
141 The test script is written as a shell script. It is to be named as
142 Tddd-testname.sh where 'ddd' is three digits and 'testname' the "bare"
143 name of your test. Tests will be run in order the 'ddd' part determines.
145 The test script should start with the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash"
146 and an assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
150 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
152 This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
153 given the option --frotz.'
157 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
158 test-lib.sh like this:
160 . ./test-lib.sh || exit 1
162 This test harness library does the following things:
164 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
165 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
167 - Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
168 mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
169 sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
170 test/tmp.<test-basename>. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
171 NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
172 in MAIL_DIR variable.
174 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
175 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
176 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
177 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
181 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
182 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
187 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
188 library for your script to use.
190 test_begin_subtest <message>
192 Set the test description message for a subsequent test_expect_*
193 invocation (see below).
195 test_expect_success <script>
197 This takes a string as parameter, and evaluates the
198 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
201 test_expect_code <code> <script>
203 This takes two strings as parameter, and evaluates the <script>.
204 If it yields <code> exit status, test is considered successful.
206 test_subtest_known_broken
208 Mark the current test as broken. Such tests are expected to fail.
209 Unlike the normal tests, which say "PASS" on success and "FAIL" on
210 failure, these will say "FIXED" on success and "BROKEN" on failure.
211 Failures from these tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop. A
212 test must call this before any test_expect_* function.
214 test_expect_equal <output> <expected>
216 This is an often-used convenience function built on top of
217 test_expect_success. It uses the message from the last
218 test_begin_subtest call, so call before calling
219 test_expect_equal. This function generates a successful test if
220 both the <output> and <expected> strings are identical. If not, it
221 will generate a failure and print the difference of the two
224 test_expect_equal_file <file1> <file2>
226 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that <file1> and <file2>
227 are files instead of strings. This is a much more robust method to
228 compare formatted textual information, since it also notices
229 whitespace and closing newline differences.
231 test_expect_equal_json <output> <expected>
233 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that the two strings are
234 treated as JSON and canonicalized before equality testing. This is
235 useful to abstract away from whitespace differences in the expected
236 output and that generated by running a notmuch command.
240 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
241 when the test script is started with --debug command line
242 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
243 development of a new test script.
245 test_emacs <emacs-lisp-expressions>
247 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
248 emacs. The script can be a sequence of emacs lisp expressions,
249 (that is, they will be evaluated within a progn form). Emacs
250 stdout and stderr is not available, the common way to get output
251 is to save it to a file. There are some auxiliary functions
252 useful in emacs tests provided in test-lib.el. Do not use `setq'
253 for setting variables in Emacs tests because it affects other
254 tests that may run in the same Emacs instance. Use `let' instead
255 so the scope of the changed variables is limited to a single test.
257 test_emacs_expect_t <emacs-lisp-expressions>
259 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
260 emacs in a manner similar to 'test_emacs'. The expressions should
261 return the value `t' to indicate that the test has passed. If the
262 test does not return `t' then it is considered failed and all data
263 returned by the test is reported to the tester.
267 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
268 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
269 exit with an appropriate error code.
271 There are also a number of notmuch-specific auxiliary functions and
272 variables which are useful in writing tests:
276 Generates a message with an optional template. Most tests will
277 actually prefer to call add_message. See below.
281 Generate a message and add it to the database (by calling "notmuch
282 new"). It is sufficient to simply call add_message with no
283 arguments if you don't care about the content of the message. If
284 more control is needed, arguments can be provide to specify many
285 different header values for the new message. See the documentation
286 within test-lib.sh or refer to many example calls within existing
291 This function should be called at the beginning of a test file
292 when a test needs to operate on a non-empty body of messages. It
293 will initialize the mail database to a known state of 50 sample
294 messages, (culled from the early history of the notmuch mailing
297 notmuch_counter_reset
298 $notmuch_counter_command
299 notmuch_counter_value
301 These allow to count how many times notmuch binary is called.
302 notmuch_counter_reset() function generates a script that counts
303 how many times it is called and resets the counter to zero. The
304 function sets $notmuch_counter_command variable to the path to the
305 generated script that should be called instead of notmuch to do
306 the counting. The notmuch_counter_value() function prints the
307 current counter value.
309 There are also functions which remove various environment-dependent
310 values from notmuch output; these are useful to ensure that test
311 results remain consistent across different machines.
313 notmuch_search_sanitize
314 notmuch_show_sanitize
315 notmuch_show_sanitize_all
316 notmuch_json_show_sanitize
318 All these functions should receive the text to be sanitized as the
319 input of a pipe, e.g.
320 output=`notmuch search "..." | notmuch_search_sanitize`