Notmuch test suite
==================
This directory contains the test suite for notmuch.
When fixing bugs or enhancing notmuch, you are strongly encouraged to
add tests in this directory to cover what you are trying to fix or
enhance.
Prerequisites
-------------
Some tests require external dependencies to run. Without them, they
will be skipped, or (rarely) marked failed. Please install these, so
that you know if you break anything.
- dtach(1)
- emacs(1)
- emacsclient(1)
- gdb(1)
- gpg(1)
- python(1)
Running Tests
-------------
The easiest way to run tests is to say "make test", (or simply run the
notmuch-test script). Either command will run all available tests.
Alternately, you can run a specific subset of tests by simply invoking
one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./search,
./reply, etc). Note that you will probably want "make test-binaries"
before running individual tests.
The following command-line options are available when running tests:
--debug::
This may help the person who is developing a new test.
It causes the command defined with test_debug to run.
--immediate::
This causes the test to immediately exit upon the first
failed test.
--valgrind::
Execute notmuch with valgrind and exit with status
126 on errors (just like regular tests, this will only stop
the test script when running under -i). Valgrind errors
go to stderr, so you might want to pass the -v option, too.
Since it makes no sense to run the tests with --valgrind and
not see any output, this option implies --verbose. For
convenience, it also implies --tee.
--tee::
In addition to printing the test output to the terminal,
write it to files named 't/test-results/$TEST_NAME.out'.
As the names depend on the tests' file names, it is safe to
run the tests with this option in parallel.
--root=
::
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.
When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
can be specified as follows:
make test OPTIONS="--verbose"
You can choose an emacs binary to run the tests in one of the
following ways.
TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs make test
TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs ./emacs
make test TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs
Skipping Tests
--------------
If, for any reason, you need to skip one or more tests, you can do so
by setting the NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS variable to the name of one or more
sections of tests.
For example:
$ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search reply" make test
Even more fine-grained skipping is possible by appending a test number
(or glob pattern) after the section name. For example, the first
search test and the second reply test could be skipped with:
$ NOTMUCH_SKIP_TESTS="search.1 reply.2" make test
Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous test
items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
remaining tests to be unaffected.
Writing Tests
-------------
The test script is written as a shell script. It should start with
the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash" with copyright notices, and an
assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# Copyright (c) 2005 Junio C Hamano
#
test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
This test exercises the "notmuch xxx" command when
given the option --frotz.'
Source 'test-lib.sh'
--------------------
After assigning test_description, the test script should source
test-lib.sh like this:
. ./test-lib.sh
This test harness library does the following things:
- If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
(or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
- Creates a temporary directory with default notmuch-config and a
mail store with a corpus of mail, (initially, 50 early messages
sent to the notmuch list). This directory is
test/tmp.. The path to notmuch-config is exported in
NOTMUCH_CONFIG environment variable and mail store path is stored
in MAIL_DIR variable.
- Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
--debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
End with test_done
------------------
Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
'test_done'.
Test harness library
--------------------
There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
library for your script to use.
test_expect_success