test: support testing notmuch as installed

[notmuch] / test / README

diff --git a/test/README b/test/README
index 10f127cbbef171be491b3bc8f5b742b8e8c67111..a81808b164f0cec0ec6c0010cb023fe77d7e098c 100644 (file)
--- a/test/README
+++ b/test/README
@@ -137,6 +137,23 @@ 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.
 
 unable to run because of missing prerequisites, but not explicitly
 skipped by the user, as failures.
 

+Testing installed notmuch
+-------------------------
+
+Systems integrators (e.g. Linux distros) may wish to test an installed
+version of notmuch.  This can be done be running
+
+     $ NOTMUCH_TEST_INSTALLED=1 ./test/notmuch-test
+
+In this scenario the test suite does not assume a built tree, and in
+particular cannot rely on the output of 'configure'. You may want to
+set certain feature environment variables ('NOTMUCH_HAVE_*') directly
+if you know those apply to your installed notmuch). Consider also
+setting TERM=dumb if the value of TERM cannot be used (e.g. in a
+chroot with missing terminfo). Note that having a built tree may cause
+surprising/broken results for NOTMUCH_TEST_INSTALLED, so consider
+cleaning first.
+

 Writing Tests
 -------------
 The test script is written as a shell script. It is to be named as
 Writing Tests
 -------------
 The test script is written as a shell script. It is to be named as