Merge branch 'release'

[notmuch] / test / README

diff --git a/test/README b/test/README
index dcd05237a0623c859af0ae67e033994137dd0d54..3f54af58876f324a851565a1e8b16633b61d5b08 100644 (file)
--- a/test/README
+++ b/test/README
@@ -26,13 +26,23 @@ that you know if you break anything.
   - gpg(1)
   - python(1)
 
-If your system lacks these tools or have older, non-upgreable versions
+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
@@ -69,15 +79,6 @@ 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=<dir>::
-       This runs the testsuites specified under a separate directory.
-       However, caution is advised, as not all tests are maintained
-       with this relocation in mind, so some tests may behave
-       differently.
-
-       Pointing this argument at a tmpfs filesystem can improve the
-       speed of the test suite for some users.
-
 Certain tests require precomputed databases to complete. You can fetch these
 databases with
 
@@ -103,9 +104,14 @@ 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
@@ -133,9 +139,9 @@ 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 explicitely skip tests, rather than relying on notmuch's
+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 explicitely
+unable to run because of missing prerequisites, but not explicitly
 skipped by the user, as failures.
 
 Writing Tests