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
87 Some tests may require a c compiler. You can choose the name and flags similarly
90 make test TEST_CC=gcc TEST_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
95 Normally, when new script starts and when test PASSes you get a message
96 printed on screen. This printing can be disabled by setting the
97 NOTMUCH_TEST_QUIET variable to a non-null value. Message on test
98 failures and skips are still printed.
102 If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
103 by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
108 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
110 Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
111 (or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
112 search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
114 $ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
116 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
117 items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
118 remaining tests to be unaffected.
122 The test script is written as a shell script. It should start with
123 the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash" with copyright notices, and an
124 assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
128 # Copyright (c) 2005 Junio C Hamano
131 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
133 This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
134 given the option --frotz.'
138 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
139 test-lib.sh like this:
143 This test harness library does the following things:
145 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
146 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
148 - Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
149 mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
150 sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
151 test/tmp.<test-basename>. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
152 NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
153 in MAIL_DIR variable.
155 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
156 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
157 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
158 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
162 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
163 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
168 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
169 library for your script to use.
171 test_expect_success <message> <script>
173 This takes two strings as parameter, and evaluates the
174 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
175 successful. <message> should state what it is testing.
177 test_begin_subtest <message>
179 Set the test description message for a subsequent test_expect_equal
180 invocation (see below).
182 test_subtest_known_broken
184 Mark the current test as broken. Such tests are expected to fail.
185 Unlike the normal tests, which say "PASS" on success and "FAIL" on
186 failure, these will say "FIXED" on success and "BROKEN" on failure.
187 Failures from these tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop. A
188 test must call this before any test_expect_* function.
190 test_expect_equal <output> <expected>
192 This is an often-used convenience function built on top of
193 test_expect_success. It uses the message from the last
194 test_begin_subtest call, so call before calling
195 test_expect_equal. This function generates a successful test if
196 both the <output> and <expected> strings are identical. If not, it
197 will generate a failure and print the difference of the two
200 test_expect_equal_file <file1> <file2>
202 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that <file1> and <file2>
203 are files instead of strings. This is a much more robust method to
204 compare formatted textual information, since it also notices
205 whitespace and closing newline differences.
207 test_expect_equal_json <output> <expected>
209 Identical to test_expect_equal, except that the two strings are
210 treated as JSON and canonicalized before equality testing. This is
211 useful to abstract away from whitespace differences in the expected
212 output and that generated by running a notmuch command.
216 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
217 when the test script is started with --debug command line
218 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
219 development of a new test script.
221 test_emacs <emacs-lisp-expressions>
223 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
224 emacs. The script can be a sequence of emacs lisp expressions,
225 (that is, they will be evaluated within a progn form). Emacs
226 stdout and stderr is not available, the common way to get output
227 is to save it to a file. There are some auxiliary functions
228 useful in emacs tests provided in test-lib.el. Do not use `setq'
229 for setting variables in Emacs tests because it affects other
230 tests that may run in the same Emacs instance. Use `let' instead
231 so the scope of the changed variables is limited to a single test.
233 test_emacs_expect_t <emacs-lisp-expressions>
235 This function executes the provided emacs lisp script within
236 emacs in a manner similar to 'test_emacs'. The expressions should
237 return the value `t' to indicate that the test has passed. If the
238 test does not return `t' then it is considered failed and all data
239 returned by the test is reported to the tester.
243 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
244 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
245 exit with an appropriate error code.
247 There are also a number of notmuch-specific auxiliary functions and
248 variables which are useful in writing tests:
252 Generates a message with an optional template. Most tests will
253 actually prefer to call add_message. See below.
257 Generate a message and add it to the database (by calling "notmuch
258 new"). It is sufficient to simply call add_message with no
259 arguments if you don't care about the content of the message. If
260 more control is needed, arguments can be provide to specify many
261 different header values for the new message. See the documentation
262 within test-lib.sh or refer to many example calls within existing
267 This function should be called at the beginning of a test file
268 when a test needs to operate on a non-empty body of messages. It
269 will initialize the mail database to a known state of 50 sample
270 messages, (culled from the early history of the notmuch mailing
273 notmuch_counter_reset
274 $notmuch_counter_command
275 notmuch_counter_value
277 These allow to count how many times notmuch binary is called.
278 notmuch_counter_reset() function generates a script that counts
279 how many times it is called and resets the counter to zero. The
280 function sets $notmuch_counter_command variable to the path to the
281 generated script that should be called instead of notmuch to do
282 the counting. The notmuch_counter_value() function prints the
283 current counter value.
285 There are also functions which remove various environment-dependent
286 values from notmuch output; these are useful to ensure that test
287 results remain consistent across different machines.
289 notmuch_search_sanitize
290 notmuch_show_sanitize
291 notmuch_show_sanitize_all
292 notmuch_json_show_sanitize
294 All these functions should receive the text to be sanitized as the
295 input of a pipe, e.g.
296 output=`notmuch search "..." | notmuch_search_sanitize`