tcltest - Test harness support code and utilities
package require tcltest ?2.3?
tcltest::test name description ?option value ...?
tcltest::test name description ?constraints? body result
tcltest::loadTestedCommands
tcltest::makeDirectory name ?directory?
tcltest::removeDirectory name ?directory?
tcltest::makeFile contents name ?directory?
tcltest::removeFile name ?directory?
tcltest::viewFile name ?directory?
tcltest::cleanupTests ?runningMultipleTests?
tcltest::runAllTests
tcltest::configure
tcltest::configure option
tcltest::configure option value ?option value ...?
tcltest::customMatch mode command
tcltest::testConstraint constraint ?value?
tcltest::outputChannel ?channelID?
tcltest::errorChannel ?channelID?
tcltest::interpreter ?interp?
tcltest::debug ?level?
tcltest::errorFile ?filename?
tcltest::limitConstraints ?boolean?
tcltest::loadFile ?filename?
tcltest::loadScript ?script?
tcltest::match ?patternList?
tcltest::matchDirectories ?patternList?
tcltest::matchFiles ?patternList?
tcltest::outputFile ?filename?
tcltest::preserveCore ?level?
tcltest::singleProcess ?boolean?
tcltest::skip ?patternList?
tcltest::skipDirectories ?patternList?
tcltest::skipFiles ?patternList?
tcltest::temporaryDirectory ?directory?
tcltest::testsDirectory ?directory?
tcltest::verbose ?level?
tcltest::test name description optionList
tcltest::bytestring string
tcltest::normalizeMsg msg
tcltest::normalizePath pathVar
tcltest::workingDirectory ?dir?
The tcltest package provides several utility commands
useful in the construction of test suites for code instrumented to be run by
evaluation of Tcl commands. Notably the built-in commands of the Tcl library
itself are tested by a test suite using the tcltest package.
All the commands provided by the tcltest package are
defined in and exported from the ::tcltest namespace, as indicated in
the SYNOPSIS above. In the following sections, all commands will be
described by their simple names, in the interest of brevity.
The central command of tcltest is test that defines
and runs a test. Testing with test involves evaluation of a Tcl
script and comparing the result to an expected result, as configured and
controlled by a number of options. Several other commands provided by
tcltest govern the configuration of test and the collection of
many test commands into test suites.
See CREATING TEST SUITES WITH TCLTEST below for an extended
example of how to use the commands of tcltest to produce test suites
for your Tcl-enabled code.
- test name
description ?option value ...?
- Defines and possibly runs a test with the name name and description
description. The name and description of a test are used in
messages reported by test during the test, as configured by the
options of tcltest. The remaining option value arguments to
test define the test, including the scripts to run, the conditions
under which to run them, the expected result, and the means by which the
expected and actual results should be compared. See TESTS below for
a complete description of the valid options and how they define a test.
The test command returns an empty string.
- test name
description ?constraints? body result
- This form of test is provided to support test suites written for
version 1 of the tcltest package, and also a simpler interface for
a common usage. It is the same as “test name
description -constraints constraints -body
body -result result”. All other options to
test take their default values. When constraints is omitted,
this form of test can be distinguished from the first because all
options begin with “-”.
- loadTestedCommands
- Evaluates in the caller's context the script specified by configure
-load or configure -loadfile. Returns the result of that script
evaluation, including any error raised by the script. Use this command and
the related configuration options to provide the commands to be tested to
the interpreter running the test suite.
- makeFile
contents name ?directory?
- Creates a file named name relative to directory directory
and write contents to that file using the encoding encoding
system. If contents does not end with a newline, a newline will
be appended so that the file named name does end with a newline.
Because the system encoding is used, this command is only suitable for
making text files. The file will be removed by the next evaluation of
cleanupTests, unless it is removed by removeFile first. The
default value of directory is the directory configure
-tmpdir. Returns the full path of the file created. Use this command
to create any text file required by a test with contents as needed.
- removeFile
name ?directory?
- Forces the file referenced by name to be removed. This file name
should be relative to directory. The default value of
directory is the directory configure -tmpdir. Returns an
empty string. Use this command to delete files created by
makeFile.
- makeDirectory
name ?directory?
- Creates a directory named name relative to directory
directory. The directory will be removed by the next evaluation of
cleanupTests, unless it is removed by removeDirectory first.
The default value of directory is the directory configure
-tmpdir. Returns the full path of the directory created. Use this
command to create any directories that are required to exist by a
test.
- removeDirectory
name ?directory?
- Forces the directory referenced by name to be removed. This
directory should be relative to directory. The default value of
directory is the directory configure -tmpdir. Returns an
empty string. Use this command to delete any directories created by
makeDirectory.
- viewFile
file ?directory?
- Returns the contents of file, except for any final newline, just as
read -nonewline would return. This file name should be relative to
directory. The default value of directory is the directory
configure -tmpdir. Use this command as a convenient way to turn the
contents of a file generated by a test into the result of that test for
matching against an expected result. The contents of the file are read
using the system encoding, so its usefulness is limited to text
files.
- cleanupTests
- Intended to clean up and summarize after several tests have been run.
Typically called once per test file, at the end of the file after all
tests have been completed. For best effectiveness, be sure that the
cleanupTests is evaluated even if an error occurs earlier in the
test file evaluation.
Prints statistics about the tests run and removes files that were
created by makeDirectory and makeFile since the last
cleanupTests. Names of files and directories in the directory
configure -tmpdir created since the last cleanupTests, but not
created by makeFile or makeDirectory are printed to
outputChannel. This command also restores the original shell
environment, as described by the ::env array. Returns an empty
string.
- runAllTests
- This is a master command meant to run an entire suite of tests, spanning
multiple files and/or directories, as governed by the configurable options
of tcltest. See RUNNING ALL TESTS below for a complete
description of the many variations possible with runAllTests.
- configure
- Returns the list of configurable options supported by tcltest. See
CONFIGURABLE OPTIONS below for the full list of options, their
valid values, and their effect on tcltest operations.
- configure
option
- Returns the current value of the supported configurable option
option. Raises an error if option is not a supported
configurable option.
- configure
option value ?option value ...?
- Sets the value of each configurable option option to the
corresponding value value, in order. Raises an error if an
option is not a supported configurable option, or if value
is not a valid value for the corresponding option, or if a
value is not provided. When an error is raised, the operation of
configure is halted, and subsequent option value arguments
are not processed.
If the environment variable ::env(TCLTEST_OPTIONS) exists
when the tcltest package is loaded (by package require
tcltest) then its value is taken as a list of arguments to pass to
configure. This allows the default values of the configuration
options to be set by the environment.
- customMatch
mode script
- Registers mode as a new legal value of the -match option to
test. When the -match mode option is passed to
test, the script script will be evaluated to compare the
actual result of evaluating the body of the test to the expected result.
To perform the match, the script is completed with two additional
words, the expected result, and the actual result, and the completed
script is evaluated in the global namespace. The completed script is
expected to return a boolean value indicating whether or not the results
match. The built-in matching modes of test are exact,
glob, and regexp.
- testConstraint
constraint ?boolean?
- Sets or returns the boolean value associated with the named
constraint. See TEST CONSTRAINTS below for more
information.
- interpreter
?executableName?
- Sets or returns the name of the executable to be execed by
runAllTests to run each test file when configure -singleproc
is false. The default value for interpreter is the name of the
currently running program as returned by info
nameofexecutable.
- outputChannel
?channelID?
- Sets or returns the output channel ID. This defaults to stdout. Any test
that prints test related output should send that output to
outputChannel rather than letting that output default to
stdout.
- errorChannel
?channelID?
- Sets or returns the error channel ID. This defaults to stderr. Any test
that prints error messages should send that output to errorChannel
rather than printing directly to stderr.
The remaining commands provided by tcltest have better
alternatives provided by tcltest or Tcl itself. They are
retained to support existing test suites, but should be avoided in new
code.
- test name
description optionList
- This form of test was provided to enable passing many options
spanning several lines to test as a single argument quoted by
braces, rather than needing to backslash quote the newlines between
arguments to test. The optionList argument is expected to be
a list with an even number of elements representing option and
value arguments to pass to test. However, these values are
not passed directly, as in the alternate forms of switch. Instead,
this form makes an unfortunate attempt to overthrow Tcl's substitution
rules by performing substitutions on some of the list elements as an
attempt to implement a “do what I mean” interpretation of a
brace-enclosed “block”. The result is nearly impossible to
document clearly, and for that reason this form is not recommended. See
the examples in CREATING TEST SUITES WITH TCLTEST below to see that
this form is really not necessary to avoid backslash-quoted newlines. If
you insist on using this form, examine the source code of tcltest
if you want to know the substitution details, or just enclose the third
through last argument to test in braces and hope for the best.
- workingDirectory
?directoryName?
- Sets or returns the current working directory when the test suite is
running. The default value for workingDirectory is the directory in which
the test suite was launched. The Tcl commands cd and pwd are
sufficient replacements.
- normalizeMsg
msg
- Returns the result of removing the “extra” newlines from
msg, where “extra” is rather imprecise. Tcl offers
plenty of string processing commands to modify strings as you wish, and
customMatch allows flexible matching of actual and expected
results.
- normalizePath
pathVar
- Resolves symlinks in a path, thus creating a path without internal
redirection. It is assumed that pathVar is absolute. pathVar
is modified in place. The Tcl command file normalize is a
sufficient replacement.
- bytestring
string
- Construct a string that consists of the requested sequence of bytes, as
opposed to a string of properly formed UTF-8 characters using the value
supplied in string. This allows the tester to create denormalized
or improperly formed strings to pass to C procedures that are supposed to
accept strings with embedded NULL types and confirm that a string result
has a certain pattern of bytes. This is exactly equivalent to the Tcl
command encoding convertfrom identity.
The test command is the heart of the tcltest
package. Its essential function is to evaluate a Tcl script and compare the
result with an expected result. The options of test define the test
script, the environment in which to evaluate it, the expected result, and
how the compare the actual result to the expected result. Some configuration
options of tcltest also influence how test operates.
The valid options for test are summarized:
test name description
?-constraints keywordList|expression?
?-setup setupScript?
?-body testScript?
?-cleanup cleanupScript?
?-result expectedAnswer?
?-output expectedOutput?
?-errorOutput expectedError?
?-returnCodes codeList?
?-match mode?
The name may be any string. It is conventional to choose a
name according to the pattern:
For white-box (regression) tests, the target should be the name of
the C function or Tcl procedure being tested. For black-box tests, the
target should be the name of the feature being tested. Some conventions call
for the names of black-box tests to have the suffix _bb. Related
tests should share a major number. As a test suite evolves, it is best to
have the same test name continue to correspond to the same test, so that it
remains meaningful to say things like “Test foo-1.3 passed in all
releases up to 3.4, but began failing in release 3.5.”
During evaluation of test, the name will be compared
to the lists of string matching patterns returned by configure
-match, and configure -skip. The test will be run only if
name matches any of the patterns from configure -match and
matches none of the patterns from configure -skip.
The description should be a short textual description of
the test. The description is included in output produced by the test,
typically test failure messages. Good description values should
briefly explain the purpose of the test to users of a test suite. The name
of a Tcl or C function being tested should be included in the description
for regression tests. If the test case exists to reproduce a bug, include
the bug ID in the description.
Valid attributes and associated values are:
- -constraints
keywordList|expression
- The optional -constraints attribute can be list of one or more
keywords or an expression. If the -constraints value is a list of
keywords, each of these keywords should be the name of a constraint
defined by a call to testConstraint. If any of the listed
constraints is false or does not exist, the test is skipped. If the
-constraints value is an expression, that expression is evaluated.
If the expression evaluates to true, then the test is run. Note that the
expression form of -constraints may interfere with the operation of
configure -constraints and configure -limitconstraints, and
is not recommended. Appropriate constraints should be added to any tests
that should not always be run. That is, conditional evaluation of a test
should be accomplished by the -constraints option, not by
conditional evaluation of test. In that way, the same number of
tests are always reported by the test suite, though the number skipped may
change based on the testing environment. The default value is an empty
list. See TEST CONSTRAINTS below for a list of built-in constraints
and information on how to add your own constraints.
- -setup
script
- The optional -setup attribute indicates a script that will
be run before the script indicated by the -body attribute. If
evaluation of script raises an error, the test will fail. The
default value is an empty script.
- -body
script
- The -body attribute indicates the script to run to carry out
the test. It must return a result that can be checked for correctness. If
evaluation of script raises an error, the test will fail. The
default value is an empty script.
- -cleanup
script
- The optional -cleanup attribute indicates a script that will
be run after the script indicated by the -body attribute. If
evaluation of script raises an error, the test will fail. The
default value is an empty script.
- -match
mode
- The -match attribute determines how expected answers supplied by
-result, -output, and -errorOutput are compared.
Valid values for mode are regexp, glob, exact,
and any value registered by a prior call to customMatch. The
default value is exact.
- -result
expectedValue
- The -result attribute supplies the expectedValue against
which the return value from script will be compared. The default value is
an empty string.
- -output
expectedValue
- The -output attribute supplies the expectedValue against
which any output sent to stdout or outputChannel during
evaluation of the script(s) will be compared. Note that only output
printed using ::puts is used for comparison. If -output is
not specified, output sent to stdout and outputChannel is
not processed for comparison.
- -errorOutput
expectedValue
- The -errorOutput attribute supplies the expectedValue
against which any output sent to stderr or errorChannel
during evaluation of the script(s) will be compared. Note that only output
printed using ::puts is used for comparison. If -errorOutput
is not specified, output sent to stderr and errorChannel is
not processed for comparison.
- -returnCodes
expectedCodeList
- The optional -returnCodes attribute supplies
expectedCodeList, a list of return codes that may be accepted from
evaluation of the -body script. If evaluation of the -body
script returns a code not in the expectedCodeList, the test fails.
All return codes known to return, in both numeric and symbolic
form, including extended return codes, are acceptable elements in the
expectedCodeList. Default value is
“ok”return.
To pass, a test must successfully evaluate its -setup,
-body, and -cleanup scripts. The return code of the
-body script and its result must match expected values, and if
specified, output and error data from the test must match expected
-output and -errorOutput values. If any of these conditions
are not met, then the test fails. Note that all scripts are evaluated in the
context of the caller of test.
As long as test is called with valid syntax and legal
values for all attributes, it will not raise an error. Test failures are
instead reported as output written to outputChannel. In default
operation, a successful test produces no output. The output messages
produced by test are controlled by the configure -verbose
option as described in CONFIGURABLE OPTIONS below. Any output
produced by the test scripts themselves should be produced using
::puts to outputChannel or errorChannel, so that users
of the test suite may easily capture output with the configure
-outfile and configure -errfile options, and so that the
-output and -errorOutput attributes work properly.
Constraints are used to determine whether or not a test should be
skipped. Each constraint has a name, which may be any string, and a boolean
value. Each test has a -constraints value which is a list of
constraint names. There are two modes of constraint control. Most
frequently, the default mode is used, indicated by a setting of configure
-limitconstraints to false. The test will run only if all constraints in
the list are true-valued. Thus, the -constraints option of
test is a convenient, symbolic way to define any conditions required
for the test to be possible or meaningful. For example, a test with
-constraints unix will only be run if the constraint unix is
true, which indicates the test suite is being run on a Unix platform.
Each test should include whatever -constraints are
required to constrain it to run only where appropriate. Several constraints
are pre-defined in the tcltest package, listed below. The
registration of user-defined constraints is performed by the
testConstraint command. User-defined constraints may appear within a
test file, or within the script specified by the configure -load or
configure -loadfile options.
The following is a list of constraints pre-defined by the
tcltest package itself:
- singleTestInterp
- test can only be run if all test files are sourced into a single
interpreter
- unix
- test can only be run on any Unix platform
- win
- test can only be run on any Windows platform
- nt
- test can only be run on any Windows NT platform
- 95
- test can only be run on any Windows 95 platform
- 98
- test can only be run on any Windows 98 platform
- mac
- test can only be run on any Mac platform
- unixOrWin
- test can only be run on a Unix or Windows platform
- macOrWin
- test can only be run on a Mac or Windows platform
- macOrUnix
- test can only be run on a Mac or Unix platform
- tempNotWin
- test can not be run on Windows. This flag is used to temporarily disable a
test.
- tempNotMac
- test can not be run on a Mac. This flag is used to temporarily disable a
test.
- unixCrash
- test crashes if it is run on Unix. This flag is used to temporarily
disable a test.
- winCrash
- test crashes if it is run on Windows. This flag is used to temporarily
disable a test.
- macCrash
- test crashes if it is run on a Mac. This flag is used to temporarily
disable a test.
- emptyTest
- test is empty, and so not worth running, but it remains as a place-holder
for a test to be written in the future. This constraint has value false to
cause tests to be skipped unless the user specifies otherwise.
- knownBug
- test is known to fail and the bug is not yet fixed. This constraint has
value false to cause tests to be skipped unless the user specifies
otherwise.
- nonPortable
- test can only be run in some known development environment. Some tests are
inherently non-portable because they depend on things like word length,
file system configuration, window manager, etc. This constraint has value
false to cause tests to be skipped unless the user specifies
otherwise.
- userInteraction
- test requires interaction from the user. This constraint has value false
to causes tests to be skipped unless the user specifies otherwise.
- interactive
- test can only be run in if the interpreter is in interactive mode (when
the global tcl_interactive variable is set to 1).
- nonBlockFiles
- test can only be run if platform supports setting files into nonblocking
mode
- asyncPipeClose
- test can only be run if platform supports async flush and async close on a
pipe
- unixExecs
- test can only be run if this machine has Unix-style commands cat,
echo, sh, wc, rm, sleep, fgrep,
ps, chmod, and mkdir available
- hasIsoLocale
- test can only be run if can switch to an ISO locale
- root
- test can only run if Unix user is root
- notRoot
- test can only run if Unix user is not root
- eformat
- test can only run if app has a working version of sprintf with respect to
the “e” format of floating-point numbers.
- stdio
- test can only be run if interpreter can be opened as a
pipe.
The alternative mode of constraint control is enabled by setting
configure -limitconstraints to true. With that configuration setting,
all existing constraints other than those in the constraint list returned by
configure -constraints are set to false. When the value of
configure -constraints is set, all those constraints are set to true.
The effect is that when both options configure -constraints and
configure -limitconstraints are in use, only those tests including
only constraints from the configure -constraints list are run; all
others are skipped. For example, one might set up a configuration with
configure -constraints knownBug \
-limitconstraints true \
-verbose pass
to run exactly those tests that exercise known bugs, and discover
whether any of them pass, indicating the bug had been fixed.
The single command runAllTests is evaluated to run an
entire test suite, spanning many files and directories. The configuration
options of tcltest control the precise operations. The
runAllTests command begins by printing a summary of its configuration
to outputChannel.
Test files to be evaluated are sought in the directory
configure -testdir. The list of files in that directory that match
any of the patterns in configure -file and match none of the patterns
in configure -notfile is generated and sorted. Then each file will be
evaluated in turn. If configure -singleproc is true, then each file
will be sourced in the caller's context. If it is false, then a copy
of interpreter will be exec'd to evaluate each file. The
multi-process operation is useful when testing can cause errors so severe
that a process terminates. Although such an error may terminate a child
process evaluating one file, the master process can continue with the rest
of the test suite. In multi-process operation, the configuration of
tcltest in the master process is passed to the child processes as
command line arguments, with the exception of configure -outfile. The
runAllTests command in the master process collects all output from
the child processes and collates their results into one master report. Any
reports of individual test failures, or messages requested by a configure
-verbose setting are passed directly on to outputChannel by the
master process.
After evaluating all selected test files, a summary of the results
is printed to outputChannel. The summary includes the total number of
tests evaluated, broken down into those skipped, those passed, and
those failed. The summary also notes the number of files evaluated, and the
names of any files with failing tests or errors. A list of the constraints
that caused tests to be skipped, and the number of tests skipped for each is
also printed. Also, messages are printed if it appears that evaluation of a
test file has caused any temporary files to be left behind in configure
-tmpdir.
Having completed and summarized all selected test files,
runAllTests then recursively acts on subdirectories of configure
-testdir. All subdirectories that match any of the patterns in
configure -relateddir and do not match any of the patterns in
configure -asidefromdir are examined. If a file named all.tcl
is found in such a directory, it will be sourced in the caller's
context. Whether or not an examined directory contains an all.tcl
file, its subdirectories are also scanned against the configure
-relateddir and configure -asidefromdir patterns. In this way,
many directories in a directory tree can have all their test files evaluated
by a single runAllTests command.
The configure command is used to set and query the
configurable options of tcltest. The valid options are:
- -singleproc
boolean
- Controls whether or not runAllTests spawns a child process for each
test file. No spawning when boolean is true. Default value is
false.
- -debug
level
- Sets the debug level to level, an integer value indicating how much
debugging information should be printed to stdout. Note that debug
messages always go to stdout, independent of the value of configure
-outfile. Default value is 0. Levels are defined as:
- 0
- Do not display any debug information.
- 1
- Display information regarding whether a test is skipped because it does
not match any of the tests that were specified using by configure
-match (userSpecifiedNonMatch) or matches any of the tests specified
by configure -skip (userSpecifiedSkip). Also print warnings about
possible lack of cleanup or balance in test files. Also print warnings
about any re-use of test names.
- 2
- Display the flag array parsed by the command line processor, the contents
of the ::env array, and all user-defined variables that exist in the
current namespace as they are used.
- 3
- Display information regarding what individual procs in the test harness
are doing.
- -verbose
level
- Sets the type of output verbosity desired to level, a list of zero
or more of the elements body, pass, skip,
start, error and line. Default value is {body
error}. Levels are defined as:
- body (b)
- Display the body of failed tests
- pass (p)
- Print output when a test passes
- skip (s)
- Print output when a test is skipped
- start (t)
- Print output whenever a test starts
- error (e)
- Print errorInfo and errorCode, if they exist, when a test return code does
not match its expected return code
- line (l)
- Print source file line information of failed tests
The single letter abbreviations noted above are also recognized so that
“configure -verbose pt” is the same as
“configure -verbose {pass start}”.
- -preservecore
level
- Sets the core preservation level to level. This level determines
how stringent checks for core files are. Default value is 0. Levels are
defined as:
- 0
- No checking — do not check for core files at the end of each test
command, but do check for them in runAllTests after all test files
have been evaluated.
- 1
- Also check for core files at the end of each test command.
- 2
- Check for core files at all times described above, and save a copy of each
core file produced in configure -tmpdir.
- -limitconstraints
boolean
- Sets the mode by which test honors constraints as described in
TESTS above. Default value is false.
- -constraints
list
- Sets all the constraints in list to true. Also used in combination
with configure -limitconstraints true to control an alternative
constraint mode as described in TESTS above. Default value is an
empty list.
- -tmpdir
directory
- Sets the temporary directory to be used by makeFile,
makeDirectory, viewFile, removeFile, and
removeDirectory as the default directory where temporary files and
directories created by test files should be created. Default value is
workingDirectory.
- -testdir
directory
- Sets the directory searched by runAllTests for test files and
subdirectories. Default value is workingDirectory.
- -file
patternList
- Sets the list of patterns used by runAllTests to determine what
test files to evaluate. Default value is
“*.test”.
- -notfile
patternList
- Sets the list of patterns used by runAllTests to determine what
test files to skip. Default value is “l.*.test”, so
that any SCCS lock files are skipped.
- -relateddir
patternList
- Sets the list of patterns used by runAllTests to determine what
subdirectories to search for an all.tcl file. Default value is
“*”.
- -asidefromdir
patternList
- Sets the list of patterns used by runAllTests to determine what
subdirectories to skip when searching for an all.tcl file. Default
value is an empty list.
- -match
patternList
- Set the list of patterns used by test to determine whether a test
should be run. Default value is “*”.
- -skip
patternList
- Set the list of patterns used by test to determine whether a test
should be skipped. Default value is an empty list.
- -load
script
- Sets a script to be evaluated by loadTestedCommands. Default value
is an empty script.
- -loadfile
filename
- Sets the filename from which to read a script to be evaluated by
loadTestedCommands. This is an alternative to -load. They
cannot be used together.
- -outfile
filename
- Sets the file to which all output produced by tcltest should be written. A
file named filename will be opened for writing, and the
resulting channel will be set as the value of outputChannel.
- -errfile
filename
- Sets the file to which all error output produced by tcltest should be
written. A file named filename will be opened for writing,
and the resulting channel will be set as the value of
errorChannel.
The fundamental element of a test suite is the individual
test command. We begin with several examples.
- [1]
- Test of a script that returns normally.
test example-1.0 {normal return} {
format %s value
} value
- [2]
- Test of a script that requires context setup and cleanup. Note the bracing
and indenting style that avoids any need for line continuation.
test example-1.1 {test file existence} -setup {
set file [makeFile {} test]
} -body {
file exists $file
} -cleanup {
removeFile test
} -result 1
- [3]
- Test of a script that raises an error.
test example-1.2 {error return} -body {
error message
} -returnCodes error -result message
- [4]
- Test with a constraint.
test example-1.3 {user owns created files} -constraints {
unix
} -setup {
set file [makeFile {} test]
} -body {
file attributes $file -owner
} -cleanup {
removeFile test
} -result $::tcl_platform(user)
At the next higher layer of organization, several test
commands are gathered together into a single test file. Test files should
have names with the .test extension, because that is the default
pattern used by runAllTests to find test files. It is a good rule of
thumb to have one test file for each source code file of your project. It is
good practice to edit the test file and the source code file together,
keeping tests synchronized with code changes.
Most of the code in the test file should be the test
commands. Use constraints to skip tests, rather than conditional evaluation
of test.
- [5]
- Recommended system for writing conditional tests, using constraints to
guard:
testConstraint X [expr $myRequirement]
test goodConditionalTest {} X {
# body
} result
- [6]
- Discouraged system for writing conditional tests, using if to
guard:
if $myRequirement {
test badConditionalTest {} {
#body
} result
}
Use the -setup and -cleanup options to establish and
release all context requirements of the test body. Do not make tests depend
on prior tests in the file. Those prior tests might be skipped. If several
consecutive tests require the same context, the appropriate setup and
cleanup scripts may be stored in variable for passing to each tests
-setup and -cleanup options. This is a better solution than
performing setup outside of test commands, because the setup will
only be done if necessary, and any errors during setup will be reported, and
not cause the test file to abort.
A test file should be able to be combined with other test files
and not interfere with them, even when configure -singleproc 1 causes
all files to be evaluated in a common interpreter. A simple way to achieve
this is to have your tests define all their commands and variables in a
namespace that is deleted when the test file evaluation is complete. A good
namespace to use is a child namespace test of the namespace of the
module you are testing.
A test file should also be able to be evaluated directly as a
script, not depending on being called by a master runAllTests. This
means that each test file should process command line arguments to give the
tester all the configuration control that tcltest provides.
After all tests in a test file, the command
cleanupTests should be called.
- [7]
- Here is a sketch of a sample test file illustrating those points:
package require tcltest 2.2
eval ::tcltest::configure $argv
package require example
namespace eval ::example::test {
namespace import ::tcltest::*
testConstraint X [expr {...}]
variable SETUP {#common setup code}
variable CLEANUP {#common cleanup code}
test example-1 {} -setup $SETUP -body {
# First test
} -cleanup $CLEANUP -result {...}
test example-2 {} -constraints X -setup $SETUP -body {
# Second test; constrained
} -cleanup $CLEANUP -result {...}
test example-3 {} {
# Third test; no context required
} {...}
cleanupTests
}
namespace delete ::example::test
The next level of organization is a full test suite, made up of
several test files. One script is used to control the entire suite. The
basic function of this script is to call runAllTests after doing any
necessary setup. This script is usually named all.tcl because that is
the default name used by runAllTests when combining multiple test
suites into one testing run.
- [8]
- Here is a sketch of a sample test suite master script:
package require Tcl 8.4
package require tcltest 2.2
package require example
::tcltest::configure -testdir \
[file dirname [file normalize [info script]]]
eval ::tcltest::configure $argv
::tcltest::runAllTests
A number of commands and variables in the ::tcltest
namespace provided by earlier releases of tcltest have not been
documented here. They are no longer part of the supported public interface
of tcltest and should not be used in new test suites. However, to
continue to support existing test suites written to the older interface
specifications, many of those deprecated commands and variables still work
as before. For example, in many circumstances, configure will be
automatically called shortly after package require tcltest 2.1
succeeds with arguments from the variable ::argv. This is to support
test suites that depend on the old behavior that tcltest was
automatically configured from command line arguments. New test files should
not depend on this, but should explicitly include
eval ::tcltest::configure $::argv
to establish a configuration from command line arguments.
There are two known issues related to nested evaluations of
test. The first issue relates to the stack level in which test
scripts are executed. Tests nested within other tests may be executed at the
same stack level as the outermost test. For example, in the following
code:
test level-1.1 {level 1} {
-body {
test level-2.1 {level 2} {
}
}
}
any script executed in level-2.1 may be executed at the same stack
level as the script defined for level-1.1.
In addition, while two tests have been run, results will
only be reported by cleanupTests for tests at the same level as test
level-1.1. However, test results for all tests run prior to level-1.1 will
be available when test level-2.1 runs. What this means is that if you try to
access the test results for test level-2.1, it will may say that
“m” tests have run, “n” tests have been skipped,
“o” tests have passed and “p” tests have failed,
where “m”, “n”, “o”, and
“p” refer to tests that were run at the same test level as
test level-1.1.
Implementation of output and error comparison in the test command
depends on usage of ::puts in your application code. Output is intercepted
by redefining the ::puts command while the defined test script is being run.
Errors thrown by C procedures or printed directly from C applications will
not be caught by the test command. Therefore, usage of the -output
and -errorOutput options to test is useful only for pure Tcl
applications that use ::puts to produce output.
test, test harness, test suite