Prerequisites
-------------
+The test system itself requires:
+
+ - bash(1) version 4.0 or newer
+
+Without bash 4.0+ the tests just refuse to run.
+
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.
+ - GNU tar(1)
- dtach(1)
- emacs(1)
- emacsclient(1)
- gpg(1)
- python(1)
+If your system lacks these tools or have older, non-upgreable versions
+of these, please (possibly compile and) install these to some other
+path, for example /usr/local/bin or /opt/gnu/bin. Then prepend the
+chosen directory to your PATH before running the tests.
+
+e.g. env PATH=/opt/gnu/bin:$PATH make test
+
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"
+one of the executable scripts in this directory, (such as ./T*-search.sh,
+./T*-reply.sh, etc). Note that you will probably want "make test-binaries"
before running individual tests.
The following command-line options are available when running tests:
Pointing this argument at a tmpfs filesystem can improve the
speed of the test suite for some users.
+Certain tests require precomputed databases to complete. You can fetch these
+databases with
+
+ make download-test-databases
+
+If you do not download the test databases, the relevant tests will be
+skipped.
+
When invoking the test suite via "make test" any of the above options
can be specified as follows:
You can choose an emacs binary (and corresponding emacsclient) to run
the tests in one of the following ways.
- TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
- TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./emacs
- make test TEST_EMACS=my-special-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
+ TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient make test
+ TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient ./T*-emacs.sh
+ make test TEST_EMACS=my-emacs TEST_EMACSCLIENT=my-emacsclient
+
+Some tests may require a c compiler. You can choose the name and flags similarly
+to with emacs, e.g.
+
+ make test TEST_CC=gcc TEST_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
Quiet Execution
---------------
items, so you cannot arbitrarily skip any test and expect the
remaining tests to be unaffected.
+Currently we do not consider skipped tests as build failures. For
+maximum robustness, when setting up automated build processes, you
+should explicitely skip tests, rather than relying on notmuch's
+detection of missing prerequisites. In the future we may treat tests
+unable to run because of missing prerequisites, but not explicitely
+skipped by the user, as failures.
+
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:
+The test script is written as a shell script. It is to be named as
+Tddd-testname.sh where 'ddd' is three digits and 'testname' the "bare"
+name of your test. Tests will be run in order the 'ddd' part determines.
+
+The test script should start with the standard "#!/usr/bin/env bash"
+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)
After assigning test_description, the test script should source
test-lib.sh like this:
- . ./test-lib.sh
+ . ./test-lib.sh || exit 1
This test harness library does the following things: