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Move test suite docs to the wiki
Matt Mackall -
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1 A simple testing framework
2
3 1 To run the tests, do:
4 2
5 3 cd tests/
6 4 python run-tests.py
7 5
8 This finds all scripts in the test directory named test-* and executes
9 them. The scripts can be either shell scripts or Python. Each test is
10 run in a temporary directory that is removed when the test is complete.
11
12 A test-<x> succeeds if the script returns success and its output
13 matches test-<x>.out. If the new output doesn't match, it is stored in
14 test-<x>.err.
15
16 There are some tricky points here that you should be aware of when
17 writing tests:
18
19 - hg commit and hg merge want user interaction
20
21 for commit use -m "text"
22 for hg merge, set HGMERGE to something noninteractive (like true or merge)
23
24 - changeset hashes will change based on user and date which make
25 things like hg history output change
26
27 use commit -m "test" -u test -d "1000000 0"
28
29 - diff and export may show the current time
30
31 use -D/--nodates to strip the dates
32
33 - You can append your own hgrc settings to the file that the environment
34 variable HGRCPATH points to. This file is cleared before running a test.
35
36 You also need to be careful that the tests are portable from one platform
37 to another. You're probably working on Linux, where the GNU toolchain has
38 more (or different) functionality than on MacOS, *BSD, Solaris, AIX, etc.
39 While testing on all platforms is the only sure-fire way to make sure that
40 you've written portable code, here's a list of problems that have been
41 found and fixed in the tests. Another, more comprehensive list may be
42 found in the GNU Autoconf manual, online here:
43
44 http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Portable-Shell.html
45
46 sh:
47
48 The Bourne shell is a very basic shell. /bin/sh on Linux is typically
49 bash, which even in Bourne-shell mode has many features that Bourne shells
50 on other Unix systems don't have (and even on Linux /bin/sh isn't
51 guaranteed to be bash). You'll need to be careful about constructs that
52 seem ubiquitous, but are actually not available in the least common
53 denominator. While using another shell (ksh, bash explicitly, posix shell,
54 etc.) explicitly may seem like another option, these may not exist in a
55 portable location, and so are generally probably not a good idea. You may
56 find that rewriting the test in python will be easier.
57
58 - don't use pushd/popd; save the output of "pwd" and use "cd" in place of
59 the pushd, and cd back to the saved pwd instead of popd.
60
61 - don't use math expressions like let, (( ... )), or $(( ... )); use "expr"
62 instead.
63
64 grep:
65
66 - don't use the -q option; redirect stdout to /dev/null instead.
67
68 - don't use extended regular expressions with grep; use egrep instead, and
69 don't escape any regex operators.
70
71 sed:
72
73 - make sure that the beginning-of-line matcher ("^") is at the very
74 beginning of the expression -- it may not be supported inside parens.
75
76 echo:
77
78 - echo may interpret "\n" and print a newline; use printf instead if you
79 want a literal "\n" (backslash + n).
80
81 false:
82
83 - false is guaranteed only to return a non-zero value; you cannot depend on
84 it being 1. On Solaris in particular, /bin/false returns 255. Rewrite
85 your test to not depend on a particular return value, or create a
86 temporary "false" executable, and call that instead.
87
88 diff:
89
90 - don't use the -N option. There's no particularly good workaround short
91 of writing a reasonably complicated replacement script, but substituting
92 gdiff for diff if you can't rewrite the test not to need -N will probably
93 do.
6 See http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/WritingTests for
7 more information on writing tests.
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