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-upgreable 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:$PATH make test
38 The easiest way to run tests is to say "make test", (or simply run the
39 notmuch-test script). Either command will run all available tests.
41 Alternately, you can run a specific subset of tests by simply invoking
42 one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./T*-search.sh,
43 ./T*-reply.sh, etc). Note that you will probably want "make test-binaries"
44 before running individual tests.
46 The following command-line options are available when running tests:
49 This may help the person who is developing a new test.
50 It causes the command defined with test_debug to run.
53 This causes the test to immediately exit upon the first
57 Execute notmuch with valgrind and exit with status
58 126 on errors (just like regular tests, this will only stop
59 the test script when running under -i). Valgrind errors
60 go to stderr, so you might want to pass the -v option, too.
62 Since it makes no sense to run the tests with --valgrind and
63 not see any output, this option implies --verbose. For
64 convenience, it also implies --tee.
67 In addition to printing the test output to the terminal,
68 write it to files named 't/test-results/$TEST_NAME.out'.
69 As the names depend on the tests' file names, it is safe to
70 run the tests with this option in parallel.
73 This runs the testsuites specified under a separate directory.
74 However, caution is advised, as not all tests are maintained
75 with this relocation in mind, so some tests may behave
78 Pointing this argument at a tmpfs filesystem can improve the
79 speed of the test suite for some users.
81 Certain tests require precomputed databases to complete. You can fetch these
84 make download-test-databases
86 If you do not download the test databases, the relevant tests will be
89 When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
90 can be specified as follows:
92 make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
94 You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
95 the tests in one of the following ways.
97 TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
98 TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./T*-emacs.sh
99 make test TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
101 Some tests may require a c compiler. You can choose the name and flags similarly
104 make test TEST_CC=gcc TEST_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
109 Normally, when new script starts and when test PASSes you get a message
110 printed on screen. This printing can be disabled by setting the
111 NOTMUCH_TEST_QUIET variable to a non-null value. Message on test
112 failures and skips are still printed.
116 If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
117 by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
122 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
124 Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
125 (or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
126 search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
128 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
130 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
131 items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
132 remaining tests to be unaffected.
134 Currently we do not consider skipped tests as build failures. For
135 maximum robustness, when setting up automated build processes, you
136 should explicitely skip tests, rather than relying on notmuch's
137 detection of missing prerequisites. In the future we may treat tests
138 unable to run because of missing prerequisites, but not explicitely
139 skipped by the user, as failures.
143 The test script is written as a shell script. It is to be named as
144 Tddd-testname.sh where 'ddd' is three digits and 'testname' the "bare"
145 name of your test. Tests will be run in order the 'ddd' part determines.
147 The test script should start with the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash"
148 and an assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
152 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
154 This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
155 given the option --frotz.'
159 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
160 test-lib.sh like this:
162 . ./test-lib.sh || exit 1
164 This test harness library does the following things:
166 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
167 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
169 - Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
170 mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
171 sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
172 test/tmp.<test-basename>. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
173 NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
174 in MAIL_DIR variable.
176 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
177 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
178 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
179 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
183 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
184 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
189 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
190 library for your script to use.
192 test_expect_success <message> <script>
194 This takes two strings as parameter, and evaluates the
195 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
196 successful. <message> should state what it is testing.
198 test_begin_subtest <message>
200 Set the test description message for a subsequent test_expect_equal
201 invocation (see below).
203 test_subtest_known_broken
205 Mark the current test as broken. Such tests are expected to fail.
206 Unlike the normal tests, which say "PASS" on success and "FAIL" on
207 failure, these will say "FIXED" on success and "BROKEN" on failure.
208 Failures from these tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop. A
209 test must call this before any test_expect_* function.
211 test_expect_equal <output> <expected>
213 This is an often-used convenience function built on top of
214 test_expect_success. It uses the message from the last
215 test_begin_subtest call, so call before calling
216 test_expect_equal. This function generates a successful test if
217 both the <output> and <expected> strings are identical. If not, it
218 will generate a failure and print the difference of the two
221 test_expect_equal_file <file1> <file2>
223 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that <file1> and <file2>
224 are files instead of strings. This is a much more robust method to
225 compare formatted textual information, since it also notices
226 whitespace and closing newline differences.
228 test_expect_equal_json <output> <expected>
230 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that the two strings are
231 treated as JSON and canonicalized before equality testing. This is
232 useful to abstract away from whitespace differences in the expected
233 output and that generated by running a notmuch command.
237 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
238 when the test script is started with --debug command line
239 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
240 development of a new test script.
242 test_emacs <emacs-lisp-expressions>
244 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
245 emacs. The script can be a sequence of emacs lisp expressions,
246 (that is, they will be evaluated within a progn form). Emacs
247 stdout and stderr is not available, the common way to get output
248 is to save it to a file. There are some auxiliary functions
249 useful in emacs tests provided in test-lib.el. Do not use `setq'
250 for setting variables in Emacs tests because it affects other
251 tests that may run in the same Emacs instance. Use `let' instead
252 so the scope of the changed variables is limited to a single test.
254 test_emacs_expect_t <emacs-lisp-expressions>
256 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
257 emacs in a manner similar to 'test_emacs'. The expressions should
258 return the value `t' to indicate that the test has passed. If the
259 test does not return `t' then it is considered failed and all data
260 returned by the test is reported to the tester.
264 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
265 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
266 exit with an appropriate error code.
268 There are also a number of notmuch-specific auxiliary functions and
269 variables which are useful in writing tests:
273 Generates a message with an optional template. Most tests will
274 actually prefer to call add_message. See below.
278 Generate a message and add it to the database (by calling "notmuch
279 new"). It is sufficient to simply call add_message with no
280 arguments if you don't care about the content of the message. If
281 more control is needed, arguments can be provide to specify many
282 different header values for the new message. See the documentation
283 within test-lib.sh or refer to many example calls within existing
288 This function should be called at the beginning of a test file
289 when a test needs to operate on a non-empty body of messages. It
290 will initialize the mail database to a known state of 50 sample
291 messages, (culled from the early history of the notmuch mailing
294 notmuch_counter_reset
295 $notmuch_counter_command
296 notmuch_counter_value
298 These allow to count how many times notmuch binary is called.
299 notmuch_counter_reset() function generates a script that counts
300 how many times it is called and resets the counter to zero. The
301 function sets $notmuch_counter_command variable to the path to the
302 generated script that should be called instead of notmuch to do
303 the counting. The notmuch_counter_value() function prints the
304 current counter value.
306 There are also functions which remove various environment-dependent
307 values from notmuch output; these are useful to ensure that test
308 results remain consistent across different machines.
310 notmuch_search_sanitize
311 notmuch_show_sanitize
312 notmuch_show_sanitize_all
313 notmuch_json_show_sanitize
315 All these functions should receive the text to be sanitized as the
316 input of a pipe, e.g.
317 output=`notmuch search "..." | notmuch_search_sanitize`