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 When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
68 can be specified as follows:
70 make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
72 You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
73 the tests in one of the following ways.
75 TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
76 TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./emacs
77 make test TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
81 If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
82 by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
87 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
89 Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
90 (or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
91 search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
93 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
95 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
96 items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
97 remaining tests to be unaffected.
101 The test script is written as a shell script. It should start with
102 the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash" with copyright notices, and an
103 assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
107 # Copyright (c) 2005 Junio C Hamano
110 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
112 This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
113 given the option --frotz.'
117 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
118 test-lib.sh like this:
122 This test harness library does the following things:
124 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
125 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
127 - Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
128 mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
129 sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
130 test/tmp.<test-basename>. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
131 NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
132 in MAIL_DIR variable.
134 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
135 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
136 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
137 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
141 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
142 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
147 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
148 library for your script to use.
150 test_expect_success <message> <script>
152 This takes two strings as parameter, and evaluates the
153 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
154 successful. <message> should state what it is testing.
156 test_begin_subtest <message>
158 Set the test description message for a subsequent test_expect_equal
159 invocation (see below).
161 test_subtest_known_broken
163 Mark the current test as broken. Such tests are expected to fail.
164 Unlike the normal tests, which say "PASS" on success and "FAIL" on
165 failure, these will say "FIXED" on success and "BROKEN" on failure.
166 Failures from these tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop. A
167 test must call this before any test_expect_* function.
169 test_expect_equal <output> <expected>
171 This is an often-used convenience function built on top of
172 test_expect_success. It uses the message from the last
173 test_begin_subtest call, so call before calling
174 test_expect_equal. This function generates a successful test if
175 both the <output> and <expected> strings are identical. If not, it
176 will generate a failure and print the difference of the two
179 test_expect_equal_file <file1> <file2>
181 Identical to test_exepect_equal, except that <file1> and <file2>
182 are files instead of strings. This is a much more robust method to
183 compare formatted textual information, since it also notices
184 whitespace and closing newline differences.
188 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
189 when the test script is started with --debug command line
190 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
191 development of a new test script.
193 test_emacs <emacs-lisp-expressions>
195 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
196 emacs. The script can be a sequence of emacs lisp expressions,
197 (that is, they will be evaluated within a progn form). Emacs
198 stdout and stderr is not available, the common way to get output
199 is to save it to a file. There are some auxiliary functions
200 useful in emacs tests provided in test-lib.el. Do not use `setq'
201 for setting variables in Emacs tests because it affects other
202 tests that may run in the same Emacs instance. Use `let' instead
203 so the scope of the changed variables is limited to a single test.
205 test_emacs_expect_t <emacs-lisp-expressions>
207 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
208 emacs in a manner similar to 'test_emacs'. The expressions should
209 return the value `t' to indicate that the test has passed. If the
210 test does not return `t' then it is considered failed and all data
211 returned by the test is reported to the tester.
215 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
216 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
217 exit with an appropriate error code.
219 There are also a number of notmuch-specific auxiliary functions and
220 variables which are useful in writing tests:
224 Generates a message with an optional template. Most tests will
225 actually prefer to call add_message. See below.
229 Generate a message and add it to the database (by calling "notmuch
230 new"). It is sufficient to simply call add_message with no
231 arguments if you don't care about the content of the message. If
232 more control is needed, arguments can be provide to specify many
233 different header values for the new message. See the documentation
234 within test-lib.sh or refer to many example calls within existing
239 This function should be called at the beginning of a test file
240 when a test needs to operate on a non-empty body of messages. It
241 will initialize the mail database to a known state of 50 sample
242 messages, (culled from the early history of the notmuch mailing
245 notmuch_counter_reset
246 $notmuch_counter_command
247 notmuch_counter_value
249 These allow to count how many times notmuch binary is called.
250 notmuch_counter_reset() function generates a script that counts
251 how many times it is called and resets the counter to zero. The
252 function sets $notmuch_counter_command variable to the path to the
253 generated script that should be called instead of notmuch to do
254 the counting. The notmuch_counter_value() function prints the
255 current counter value.