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 Certain tests require precomputed databases to complete. You can fetch these
85 make download-test-databases
87 If you do not download the test databases, the relevant tests will be
90 When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
91 can be specified as follows:
93 make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
95 You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
96 the tests in one of the following ways.
98 TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
99 TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./T*-emacs.sh
100 make test TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
102 Some tests may require a c compiler. You can choose the name and flags similarly
105 make test TEST_CC=gcc TEST_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
109 If either the moreutils or GNU "parallel" utility is available all
110 tests will be run in parallel. If the NOTMUCH_TEST_SERIALIZE variable
111 is non-null all tests will be executed sequentially.
115 Normally, when new script starts and when test PASSes you get a message
116 printed on screen. This printing can be disabled by setting the
117 NOTMUCH_TEST_QUIET variable to a non-null value. Message on test
118 failures and skips are still printed.
122 If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
123 by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
128 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
130 Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
131 (or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
132 search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
134 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
136 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
137 items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
138 remaining tests to be unaffected.
140 Currently we do not consider skipped tests as build failures. For
141 maximum robustness, when setting up automated build processes, you
142 should explicitly skip tests, rather than relying on notmuch's
143 detection of missing prerequisites. In the future we may treat tests
144 unable to run because of missing prerequisites, but not explicitly
145 skipped by the user, as failures.
149 The test script is written as a shell script. It is to be named as
150 Tddd-testname.sh where 'ddd' is three digits and 'testname' the "bare"
151 name of your test. Tests will be run in order the 'ddd' part determines.
153 The test script should start with the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash"
154 and an assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
158 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
160 This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
161 given the option --frotz.'
165 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
166 test-lib.sh like this:
168 . ./test-lib.sh || exit 1
170 This test harness library does the following things:
172 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
173 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
175 - Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
176 mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
177 sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
178 test/tmp.<test-basename>. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
179 NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
180 in MAIL_DIR variable.
182 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
183 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
184 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
185 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
189 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
190 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
195 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
196 library for your script to use.
198 test_begin_subtest <message>
200 Set the test description message for a subsequent test_expect_*
201 invocation (see below).
203 test_expect_success <script>
205 This takes a string as parameter, and evaluates the
206 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
209 test_expect_code <code> <script>
211 This takes two strings as parameter, and evaluates the <script>.
212 If it yields <code> exit status, test is considered successful.
214 test_subtest_known_broken
216 Mark the current test as broken. Such tests are expected to fail.
217 Unlike the normal tests, which say "PASS" on success and "FAIL" on
218 failure, these will say "FIXED" on success and "BROKEN" on failure.
219 Failures from these tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop. A
220 test must call this before any test_expect_* function.
222 test_expect_equal <output> <expected>
224 This is an often-used convenience function built on top of
225 test_expect_success. It uses the message from the last
226 test_begin_subtest call, so call before calling
227 test_expect_equal. This function generates a successful test if
228 both the <output> and <expected> strings are identical. If not, it
229 will generate a failure and print the difference of the two
232 test_expect_equal_file <file1> <file2>
234 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that <file1> and <file2>
235 are files instead of strings. This is a much more robust method to
236 compare formatted textual information, since it also notices
237 whitespace and closing newline differences.
239 test_expect_equal_json <output> <expected>
241 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that the two strings are
242 treated as JSON and canonicalized before equality testing. This is
243 useful to abstract away from whitespace differences in the expected
244 output and that generated by running a notmuch command.
248 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
249 when the test script is started with --debug command line
250 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
251 development of a new test script.
253 test_emacs <emacs-lisp-expressions>
255 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
256 emacs. The script can be a sequence of emacs lisp expressions,
257 (that is, they will be evaluated within a progn form). Emacs
258 stdout and stderr is not available, the common way to get output
259 is to save it to a file. There are some auxiliary functions
260 useful in emacs tests provided in test-lib.el. Do not use `setq'
261 for setting variables in Emacs tests because it affects other
262 tests that may run in the same Emacs instance. Use `let' instead
263 so the scope of the changed variables is limited to a single test.
265 test_emacs_expect_t <emacs-lisp-expressions>
267 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
268 emacs in a manner similar to 'test_emacs'. The expressions should
269 return the value `t' to indicate that the test has passed. If the
270 test does not return `t' then it is considered failed and all data
271 returned by the test is reported to the tester.
275 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
276 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
277 exit with an appropriate error code.
279 There are also a number of notmuch-specific auxiliary functions and
280 variables which are useful in writing tests:
284 Generates a message with an optional template. Most tests will
285 actually prefer to call add_message. See below.
289 Generate a message and add it to the database (by calling "notmuch
290 new"). It is sufficient to simply call add_message with no
291 arguments if you don't care about the content of the message. If
292 more control is needed, arguments can be provide to specify many
293 different header values for the new message. See the documentation
294 within test-lib.sh or refer to many example calls within existing
299 This function should be called at the beginning of a test file
300 when a test needs to operate on a non-empty body of messages. It
301 will initialize the mail database to a known state of 50 sample
302 messages, (culled from the early history of the notmuch mailing
305 notmuch_counter_reset
306 $notmuch_counter_command
307 notmuch_counter_value
309 These allow to count how many times notmuch binary is called.
310 notmuch_counter_reset() function generates a script that counts
311 how many times it is called and resets the counter to zero. The
312 function sets $notmuch_counter_command variable to the path to the
313 generated script that should be called instead of notmuch to do
314 the counting. The notmuch_counter_value() function prints the
315 current counter value.
317 There are also functions which remove various environment-dependent
318 values from notmuch output; these are useful to ensure that test
319 results remain consistent across different machines.
321 notmuch_search_sanitize
322 notmuch_show_sanitize
323 notmuch_show_sanitize_all
324 notmuch_json_show_sanitize
326 All these functions should receive the text to be sanitized as the
327 input of a pipe, e.g.
328 output=`notmuch search "..." | notmuch_search_sanitize`