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 Some tests require external dependencies to run. Without them, they
12 will be skipped, or (rarely) marked failed. Please install these, so
13 that you know if you break anything.
24 The easiest way to run tests is to say "make test", (or simply run the
25 notmuch-test script). Either command will run all available tests.
27 Alternately, you can run a specific subset of tests by simply invoking
28 one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./search,
29 ./reply, etc). Note that you will probably want "make test-binaries"
30 before running individual tests.
32 The following command-line options are available when running tests:
35 This may help the person who is developing a new test.
36 It causes the command defined with test_debug to run.
39 This causes the test to immediately exit upon the first
43 Execute notmuch with valgrind and exit with status
44 126 on errors (just like regular tests, this will only stop
45 the test script when running under -i). Valgrind errors
46 go to stderr, so you might want to pass the -v option, too.
48 Since it makes no sense to run the tests with --valgrind and
49 not see any output, this option implies --verbose. For
50 convenience, it also implies --tee.
53 In addition to printing the test output to the terminal,
54 write it to files named 't/test-results/$TEST_NAME.out'.
55 As the names depend on the tests' file names, it is safe to
56 run the tests with this option in parallel.
59 This runs the testsuites specified under a separate directory.
60 However, caution is advised, as not all tests are maintained
61 with this relocation in mind, so some tests may behave
64 Pointing this argument at a tmpfs filesystem can improve the
65 speed of the test suite for some users.
67 When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
68 can be specified as follows:
70 make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
72 You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
73 the tests in one of the following ways.
75 TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
76 TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./emacs
77 make test TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
82 Normally, when new script starts and when test PASSes you get a message
83 printed on screen. This printing can be disabled by setting the
84 NOTMUCH_TEST_QUIET variable to a non-null value. Message on test
85 failures and skips are still printed.
89 If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
90 by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
95 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
97 Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
98 (or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
99 search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
101 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
103 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
104 items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
105 remaining tests to be unaffected.
109 The test script is written as a shell script. It should start with
110 the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash" with copyright notices, and an
111 assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
115 # Copyright (c) 2005 Junio C Hamano
118 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
120 This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
121 given the option --frotz.'
125 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
126 test-lib.sh like this:
130 This test harness library does the following things:
132 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
133 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
135 - Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
136 mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
137 sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
138 test/tmp.<test-basename>. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
139 NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
140 in MAIL_DIR variable.
142 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
143 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
144 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
145 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
149 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
150 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
155 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
156 library for your script to use.
158 test_expect_success <message> <script>
160 This takes two strings as parameter, and evaluates the
161 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
162 successful. <message> should state what it is testing.
164 test_begin_subtest <message>
166 Set the test description message for a subsequent test_expect_equal
167 invocation (see below).
169 test_subtest_known_broken
171 Mark the current test as broken. Such tests are expected to fail.
172 Unlike the normal tests, which say "PASS" on success and "FAIL" on
173 failure, these will say "FIXED" on success and "BROKEN" on failure.
174 Failures from these tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop. A
175 test must call this before any test_expect_* function.
177 test_expect_equal <output> <expected>
179 This is an often-used convenience function built on top of
180 test_expect_success. It uses the message from the last
181 test_begin_subtest call, so call before calling
182 test_expect_equal. This function generates a successful test if
183 both the <output> and <expected> strings are identical. If not, it
184 will generate a failure and print the difference of the two
187 test_expect_equal_file <file1> <file2>
189 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that <file1> and <file2>
190 are files instead of strings. This is a much more robust method to
191 compare formatted textual information, since it also notices
192 whitespace and closing newline differences.
194 test_expect_equal_json <output> <expected>
196 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that the two strings are
197 treated as JSON and canonicalized before equality testing. This is
198 useful to abstract away from whitespace differences in the expected
199 output and that generated by running a notmuch command.
203 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
204 when the test script is started with --debug command line
205 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
206 development of a new test script.
208 test_emacs <emacs-lisp-expressions>
210 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
211 emacs. The script can be a sequence of emacs lisp expressions,
212 (that is, they will be evaluated within a progn form). Emacs
213 stdout and stderr is not available, the common way to get output
214 is to save it to a file. There are some auxiliary functions
215 useful in emacs tests provided in test-lib.el. Do not use `setq'
216 for setting variables in Emacs tests because it affects other
217 tests that may run in the same Emacs instance. Use `let' instead
218 so the scope of the changed variables is limited to a single test.
220 test_emacs_expect_t <emacs-lisp-expressions>
222 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
223 emacs in a manner similar to 'test_emacs'. The expressions should
224 return the value `t' to indicate that the test has passed. If the
225 test does not return `t' then it is considered failed and all data
226 returned by the test is reported to the tester.
230 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
231 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
232 exit with an appropriate error code.
234 There are also a number of notmuch-specific auxiliary functions and
235 variables which are useful in writing tests:
239 Generates a message with an optional template. Most tests will
240 actually prefer to call add_message. See below.
244 Generate a message and add it to the database (by calling "notmuch
245 new"). It is sufficient to simply call add_message with no
246 arguments if you don't care about the content of the message. If
247 more control is needed, arguments can be provide to specify many
248 different header values for the new message. See the documentation
249 within test-lib.sh or refer to many example calls within existing
254 This function should be called at the beginning of a test file
255 when a test needs to operate on a non-empty body of messages. It
256 will initialize the mail database to a known state of 50 sample
257 messages, (culled from the early history of the notmuch mailing
260 notmuch_counter_reset
261 $notmuch_counter_command
262 notmuch_counter_value
264 These allow to count how many times notmuch binary is called.
265 notmuch_counter_reset() function generates a script that counts
266 how many times it is called and resets the counter to zero. The
267 function sets $notmuch_counter_command variable to the path to the
268 generated script that should be called instead of notmuch to do
269 the counting. The notmuch_counter_value() function prints the
270 current counter value.
272 There are also functions which remove various environment-dependent
273 values from notmuch output; these are useful to ensure that test
274 results remain consistent across different machines.
276 notmuch_search_sanitize
277 notmuch_show_sanitize
278 notmuch_show_sanitize_all
279 notmuch_json_show_sanitize
281 All these functions should receive the text to be sanitized as the
282 input of a pipe, e.g.
283 output=`notmuch search "..." | notmuch_search_sanitize`