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 Certain tests require precomputed databases to complete. You can fetch these
70 make download-test-databases
72 If you do not download the test databases, the relevant tests will be
75 When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
76 can be specified as follows:
78 make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
80 You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
81 the tests in one of the following ways.
83 TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
84 TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./emacs
85 make test TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
90 Normally, when new script starts and when test PASSes you get a message
91 printed on screen. This printing can be disabled by setting the
92 NOTMUCH_TEST_QUIET variable to a non-null value. Message on test
93 failures and skips are still printed.
97 If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
98 by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
103 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
105 Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
106 (or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
107 search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
109 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
111 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
112 items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
113 remaining tests to be unaffected.
117 The test script is written as a shell script. It should start with
118 the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash" with copyright notices, and an
119 assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
123 # Copyright (c) 2005 Junio C Hamano
126 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
128 This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
129 given the option --frotz.'
133 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
134 test-lib.sh like this:
138 This test harness library does the following things:
140 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
141 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
143 - Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
144 mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
145 sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
146 test/tmp.<test-basename>. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
147 NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
148 in MAIL_DIR variable.
150 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
151 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
152 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
153 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
157 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
158 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
163 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
164 library for your script to use.
166 test_expect_success <message> <script>
168 This takes two strings as parameter, and evaluates the
169 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
170 successful. <message> should state what it is testing.
172 test_begin_subtest <message>
174 Set the test description message for a subsequent test_expect_equal
175 invocation (see below).
177 test_subtest_known_broken
179 Mark the current test as broken. Such tests are expected to fail.
180 Unlike the normal tests, which say "PASS" on success and "FAIL" on
181 failure, these will say "FIXED" on success and "BROKEN" on failure.
182 Failures from these tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop. A
183 test must call this before any test_expect_* function.
185 test_expect_equal <output> <expected>
187 This is an often-used convenience function built on top of
188 test_expect_success. It uses the message from the last
189 test_begin_subtest call, so call before calling
190 test_expect_equal. This function generates a successful test if
191 both the <output> and <expected> strings are identical. If not, it
192 will generate a failure and print the difference of the two
195 test_expect_equal_file <file1> <file2>
197 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that <file1> and <file2>
198 are files instead of strings. This is a much more robust method to
199 compare formatted textual information, since it also notices
200 whitespace and closing newline differences.
202 test_expect_equal_json <output> <expected>
204 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that the two strings are
205 treated as JSON and canonicalized before equality testing. This is
206 useful to abstract away from whitespace differences in the expected
207 output and that generated by running a notmuch command.
211 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
212 when the test script is started with --debug command line
213 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
214 development of a new test script.
216 test_emacs <emacs-lisp-expressions>
218 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
219 emacs. The script can be a sequence of emacs lisp expressions,
220 (that is, they will be evaluated within a progn form). Emacs
221 stdout and stderr is not available, the common way to get output
222 is to save it to a file. There are some auxiliary functions
223 useful in emacs tests provided in test-lib.el. Do not use `setq'
224 for setting variables in Emacs tests because it affects other
225 tests that may run in the same Emacs instance. Use `let' instead
226 so the scope of the changed variables is limited to a single test.
228 test_emacs_expect_t <emacs-lisp-expressions>
230 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
231 emacs in a manner similar to 'test_emacs'. The expressions should
232 return the value `t' to indicate that the test has passed. If the
233 test does not return `t' then it is considered failed and all data
234 returned by the test is reported to the tester.
238 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
239 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
240 exit with an appropriate error code.
242 There are also a number of notmuch-specific auxiliary functions and
243 variables which are useful in writing tests:
247 Generates a message with an optional template. Most tests will
248 actually prefer to call add_message. See below.
252 Generate a message and add it to the database (by calling "notmuch
253 new"). It is sufficient to simply call add_message with no
254 arguments if you don't care about the content of the message. If
255 more control is needed, arguments can be provide to specify many
256 different header values for the new message. See the documentation
257 within test-lib.sh or refer to many example calls within existing
262 This function should be called at the beginning of a test file
263 when a test needs to operate on a non-empty body of messages. It
264 will initialize the mail database to a known state of 50 sample
265 messages, (culled from the early history of the notmuch mailing
268 notmuch_counter_reset
269 $notmuch_counter_command
270 notmuch_counter_value
272 These allow to count how many times notmuch binary is called.
273 notmuch_counter_reset() function generates a script that counts
274 how many times it is called and resets the counter to zero. The
275 function sets $notmuch_counter_command variable to the path to the
276 generated script that should be called instead of notmuch to do
277 the counting. The notmuch_counter_value() function prints the
278 current counter value.
280 There are also functions which remove various environment-dependent
281 values from notmuch output; these are useful to ensure that test
282 results remain consistent across different machines.
284 notmuch_search_sanitize
285 notmuch_show_sanitize
286 notmuch_show_sanitize_all
287 notmuch_json_show_sanitize
289 All these functions should receive the text to be sanitized as the
290 input of a pipe, e.g.
291 output=`notmuch search "..." | notmuch_search_sanitize`