X-Git-Url: https://git.notmuchmail.org/git?a=blobdiff_plain;f=test%2FREADME;h=3f54af58876f324a851565a1e8b16633b61d5b08;hb=2c1f783f5f4ad28d89f2e83d7253bae7bba98440;hp=2e757e0eeca8d1c7641848bbb744ee681008fb9c;hpb=f0e0053149bb3b51f4a0cd43371292b639f236a8;p=notmuch
diff --git a/test/README b/test/README
index 2e757e0e..3f54af58 100644
--- a/test/README
+++ b/test/README
@@ -6,14 +6,51 @@ When fixing bugs or enhancing notmuch, you are strongly encouraged to
add tests in this directory to cover what you are trying to fix or
enhance.
+Prerequisites
+-------------
+The test system itself requires:
+
+ - bash(1) version 4.0 or newer
+
+Without bash 4.0+ the tests just refuse to run.
+
+Some tests require external dependencies to run. Without them, they
+will be skipped, or (rarely) marked failed. Please install these, so
+that you know if you break anything.
+
+ - GNU tar(1)
+ - dtach(1)
+ - emacs(1)
+ - emacsclient(1)
+ - gdb(1)
+ - gpg(1)
+ - python(1)
+
+If your system lacks these tools or have older, non-upgradable versions
+of these, please (possibly compile and) install these to some other
+path, for example /usr/local/bin or /opt/gnu/bin. Then prepend the
+chosen directory to your PATH before running the tests.
+
+e.g. env PATH=/opt/gnu/bin:$PATH make test
+
+For FreeBSD you need to install latest gdb from ports or packages and
+provide path to it in TEST_GDB environment variable before executing
+the tests, native FreeBSD gdb does not not work. If you install
+coreutils, which provides GNU versions of basic utils like 'date' and
+'base64' on FreeBSD, the test suite will use these instead of the
+native ones. This provides robustness against portability issues with
+these system tools. Most often the tests are written, reviewed and
+tested on Linux system so such portability issues arise from time to
+time.
+
Running Tests
-------------
The easiest way to run tests is to say "make test", (or simply run the
notmuch-test script). Either command will run all available tests.
Alternately, you can run a specific subset of tests by simply invoking
-one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./search,
-./reply, etc). Note that you will probably want "make test-binaries"
+one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./T*-search.sh,
+./T*-reply.sh, etc). Note that you will probably want "make test-binaries"
before running individual tests.
The following command-line options are available when running tests:
@@ -42,20 +79,44 @@ The following command-line options are available when running tests:
As the names depend on the tests' file names, it is safe to
run the tests with this option in parallel.
---root=
::
- This runs the testsuites specified under a seperate directory.
- However, caution is advised, as not all tests are maintained
- with this relocation in mind, so some tests may behave
- differently.
+Certain tests require precomputed databases to complete. You can fetch these
+databases with
+
+ make download-test-databases
- Pointing this argument at a tmpfs filesystem can improve the
- speed of the test suite for some users.
+If you do not download the test databases, the relevant tests will be
+skipped.
When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
can be specified as follows:
make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
+You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
+the tests in one of the following ways.
+
+ TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
+ TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./T*-emacs.sh
+ make test TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
+
+Some tests may require a c compiler. You can choose the name and flags similarly
+to with emacs, e.g.
+
+ make test TEST_CC=gcc TEST_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
+
+Parallel Execution
+------------------
+If either the moreutils or GNU "parallel" utility is available all
+tests will be run in parallel. If the NOTMUCH_TEST_SERIALIZE variable
+is non-null all tests will be executed sequentially.
+
+Quiet Execution
+---------------
+Normally, when new script starts and when test PASSes you get a message
+printed on screen. This printing can be disabled by setting the
+NOTMUCH_TEST_QUIET variable to a non-null value. Message on test
+failures and skips are still printed.
+
Skipping Tests
--------------
If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
@@ -76,16 +137,23 @@ Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
remaining tests to be unaffected.
+Currently we do not consider skipped tests as build failures. For
+maximum robustness, when setting up automated build processes, you
+should explicitly skip tests, rather than relying on notmuch's
+detection of missing prerequisites. In the future we may treat tests
+unable to run because of missing prerequisites, but not explicitly
+skipped by the user, as failures.
+
Writing Tests
-------------
-The test script is written as a shell script. It should start with
-the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash" with copyright notices, and an
-assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
+The test script is written as a shell script. It is to be named as
+Tddd-testname.sh where 'ddd' is three digits and 'testname' the "bare"
+name of your test. Tests will be run in order the 'ddd' part determines.
+
+The test script should start with the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash"
+and an assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
- #
- # Copyright (c) 2005 Junio C Hamano
- #
test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
@@ -97,7 +165,7 @@ Source 'test-lib.sh'
After assigning test_description, the test script should source
test-lib.sh like this:
- . ./test-lib.sh
+ . ./test-lib.sh || exit 1
This test harness library does the following things:
@@ -127,16 +195,21 @@ Test harness library
There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
library for your script to use.
- test_expect_success