4 This directory holds many test scripts for core GIT tools. The
5 first part of this short document describes how to run the tests
8 When fixing the tools or adding enhancements, you are strongly
9 encouraged to add tests in this directory to cover what you are
10 trying to fix or enhance. The later part of this short document
11 describes how your test scripts should be organized.
17 The easiest way to run tests is to say "make". This runs all
20 *** t0000-basic.sh ***
21 ok 1 - .git/objects should be empty after git init in an empty repo.
22 ok 2 - .git/objects should have 3 subdirectories.
23 ok 3 - success is reported like this
25 ok 43 - very long name in the index handled sanely
26 # fixed 1 known breakage(s)
27 # still have 1 known breakage(s)
28 # passed all remaining 42 test(s)
32 ok 2 - plain with GIT_WORK_TREE
35 Since the tests all output TAP (see http://testanything.org) they can
36 be run with any TAP harness. Here's an example of parallel testing
37 powered by a recent version of prove(1):
39 $ prove --timer --jobs 15 ./t[0-9]*.sh
40 [19:17:33] ./t0005-signals.sh ................................... ok 36 ms
41 [19:17:33] ./t0022-crlf-rename.sh ............................... ok 69 ms
42 [19:17:33] ./t0024-crlf-archive.sh .............................. ok 154 ms
43 [19:17:33] ./t0004-unwritable.sh ................................ ok 289 ms
44 [19:17:33] ./t0002-gitfile.sh ................................... ok 480 ms
45 ===( 102;0 25/? 6/? 5/? 16/? 1/? 4/? 2/? 1/? 3/? 1... )===
47 prove and other harnesses come with a lot of useful options. The
48 --state option in particular is very useful:
50 # Repeat until no more failures
51 $ prove -j 15 --state=failed,save ./t[0-9]*.sh
53 You can give DEFAULT_TEST_TARGET=prove on the make command (or define it
54 in config.mak) to cause "make test" to run tests under prove.
55 GIT_PROVE_OPTS can be used to pass additional options, e.g.
57 $ make DEFAULT_TEST_TARGET=prove GIT_PROVE_OPTS='--timer --jobs 16' test
59 You can also run each test individually from command line, like this:
61 $ sh ./t3010-ls-files-killed-modified.sh
62 ok 1 - git update-index --add to add various paths.
63 ok 2 - git ls-files -k to show killed files.
64 ok 3 - validate git ls-files -k output.
65 ok 4 - git ls-files -m to show modified files.
66 ok 5 - validate git ls-files -m output.
67 # passed all 5 test(s)
70 You can pass --verbose (or -v), --debug (or -d), and --immediate
71 (or -i) command line argument to the test, or by setting GIT_TEST_OPTS
72 appropriately before running "make".
75 This makes the test more verbose. Specifically, the
76 command being run and their output if any are also
80 This may help the person who is developing a new test.
81 It causes the command defined with test_debug to run.
82 The "trash" directory (used to store all temporary data
83 during testing) is not deleted even if there are no
84 failed tests so that you can inspect its contents after
88 This causes the test to immediately exit upon the first
92 This causes additional long-running tests to be run (where
93 available), for more exhaustive testing.
96 Execute all Git binaries with valgrind and exit with status
97 126 on errors (just like regular tests, this will only stop
98 the test script when running under -i).
100 Since it makes no sense to run the tests with --valgrind and
101 not see any output, this option implies --verbose. For
102 convenience, it also implies --tee.
104 Note that valgrind is run with the option --leak-check=no,
105 as the git process is short-lived and some errors are not
106 interesting. In order to run a single command under the same
107 conditions manually, you should set GIT_VALGRIND to point to
108 the 't/valgrind/' directory and use the commands under
112 In addition to printing the test output to the terminal,
113 write it to files named 't/test-results/$TEST_NAME.out'.
114 As the names depend on the tests' file names, it is safe to
115 run the tests with this option in parallel.
118 By default tests are run without dashed forms of
119 commands (like git-commit) in the PATH (it only uses
120 wrappers from ../bin-wrappers). Use this option to include
121 the build directory (..) in the PATH, which contains all
122 the dashed forms of commands. This option is currently
123 implied by other options like --valgrind and
127 Create "trash" directories used to store all temporary data during
128 testing under <directory>, instead of the t/ directory.
129 Using this option with a RAM-based filesystem (such as tmpfs)
130 can massively speed up the test suite.
132 You can also set the GIT_TEST_INSTALLED environment variable to
133 the bindir of an existing git installation to test that installation.
134 You still need to have built this git sandbox, from which various
135 test-* support programs, templates, and perl libraries are used.
136 If your installed git is incomplete, it will silently test parts of
137 your built version instead.
139 When using GIT_TEST_INSTALLED, you can also set GIT_TEST_EXEC_PATH to
140 override the location of the dashed-form subcommands (what
141 GIT_EXEC_PATH would be used for during normal operation).
142 GIT_TEST_EXEC_PATH defaults to `$GIT_TEST_INSTALLED/git --exec-path`.
148 In some environments, certain tests have no way of succeeding
149 due to platform limitation, such as lack of 'unzip' program, or
150 filesystem that do not allow arbitrary sequence of non-NUL bytes
153 You should be able to say something like
155 $ GIT_SKIP_TESTS=t9200.8 sh ./t9200-git-cvsexport-commit.sh
159 $ GIT_SKIP_TESTS='t[0-4]??? t91?? t9200.8' make
161 to omit such tests. The value of the environment variable is a
162 SP separated list of patterns that tells which tests to skip,
163 and either can match the "t[0-9]{4}" part to skip the whole
164 test, or t[0-9]{4} followed by ".$number" to say which
165 particular test to skip.
167 Note that some tests in the existing test suite rely on previous
168 test item, so you cannot arbitrarily disable one and expect the
169 remainder of test to check what the test originally was intended
176 The test files are named as:
178 tNNNN-commandname-details.sh
180 where N is a decimal digit.
182 First digit tells the family:
184 0 - the absolute basics and global stuff
185 1 - the basic commands concerning database
186 2 - the basic commands concerning the working tree
187 3 - the other basic commands (e.g. ls-files)
188 4 - the diff commands
189 5 - the pull and exporting commands
190 6 - the revision tree commands (even e.g. merge-base)
191 7 - the porcelainish commands concerning the working tree
192 8 - the porcelainish commands concerning forensics
195 Second digit tells the particular command we are testing.
197 Third digit (optionally) tells the particular switch or group of switches
200 If you create files under t/ directory (i.e. here) that is not
201 the top-level test script, never name the file to match the above
202 pattern. The Makefile here considers all such files as the
203 top-level test script and tries to run all of them. Care is
204 especially needed if you are creating a common test library
205 file, similar to test-lib.sh, because such a library file may
206 not be suitable for standalone execution.
212 The test script is written as a shell script. It should start
213 with the standard "#!/bin/sh" with copyright notices, and an
214 assignment to variable 'test_description', like this:
218 # Copyright (c) 2005 Junio C Hamano
221 test_description='xxx test (option --frotz)
223 This test registers the following structure in the cache
224 and tries to run git-ls-files with option --frotz.'
230 After assigning test_description, the test script should source
231 test-lib.sh like this:
235 This test harness library does the following things:
237 - If the script is invoked with command line argument --help
238 (or -h), it shows the test_description and exits.
240 - Creates an empty test directory with an empty .git/objects database
241 and chdir(2) into it. This directory is 't/trash
242 directory.$test_name_without_dotsh', with t/ subject to change by
243 the --root option documented above.
245 - Defines standard test helper functions for your scripts to
246 use. These functions are designed to make all scripts behave
247 consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
248 --debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
250 Do's, don'ts & things to keep in mind
251 -------------------------------------
253 Here are a few examples of things you probably should and shouldn't do
258 - Put all code inside test_expect_success and other assertions.
260 Even code that isn't a test per se, but merely some setup code
261 should be inside a test assertion.
263 - Chain your test assertions
265 Write test code like this:
277 That way all of the commands in your tests will succeed or fail. If
278 you must ignore the return value of something, consider using a
279 helper function (e.g. use sane_unset instead of unset, in order
280 to avoid unportable return value for unsetting a variable that was
281 already unset), or prepending the command with test_might_fail or
284 - Check the test coverage for your tests. See the "Test coverage"
287 Don't blindly follow test coverage metrics; if a new function you added
288 doesn't have any coverage, then you're probably doing something wrong,
289 but having 100% coverage doesn't necessarily mean that you tested
292 Tests that are likely to smoke out future regressions are better
293 than tests that just inflate the coverage metrics.
295 - When a test checks for an absolute path that a git command generated,
296 construct the expected value using $(pwd) rather than $PWD,
297 $TEST_DIRECTORY, or $TRASH_DIRECTORY. It makes a difference on
298 Windows, where the shell (MSYS bash) mangles absolute path names.
299 For details, see the commit message of 4114156ae9.
303 - exit() within a <script> part.
305 The harness will catch this as a programming error of the test.
306 Use test_done instead if you need to stop the tests early (see
307 "Skipping tests" below).
309 - use '! git cmd' when you want to make sure the git command exits
310 with failure in a controlled way by calling "die()". Instead,
311 use 'test_must_fail git cmd'. This will signal a failure if git
312 dies in an unexpected way (e.g. segfault).
314 - use perl without spelling it as "$PERL_PATH". This is to help our
315 friends on Windows where the platform Perl often adds CR before
316 the end of line, and they bundle Git with a version of Perl that
317 does not do so, whose path is specified with $PERL_PATH.
319 - use sh without spelling it as "$SHELL_PATH", when the script can
320 be misinterpreted by broken platform shell (e.g. Solaris).
322 - chdir around in tests. It is not sufficient to chdir to
323 somewhere and then chdir back to the original location later in
324 the test, as any intermediate step can fail and abort the test,
325 causing the next test to start in an unexpected directory. Do so
326 inside a subshell if necessary.
328 - Break the TAP output
330 The raw output from your test may be interpreted by a TAP harness. TAP
331 harnesses will ignore everything they don't know about, but don't step
332 on their toes in these areas:
334 - Don't print lines like "$x..$y" where $x and $y are integers.
336 - Don't print lines that begin with "ok" or "not ok".
338 TAP harnesses expect a line that begins with either "ok" and "not
339 ok" to signal a test passed or failed (and our harness already
340 produces such lines), so your script shouldn't emit such lines to
343 You can glean some further possible issues from the TAP grammar
344 (see http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?TAP::Parser::Grammar#TAP_Grammar)
345 but the best indication is to just run the tests with prove(1),
346 it'll complain if anything is amiss.
350 - Inside <script> part, the standard output and standard error
351 streams are discarded, and the test harness only reports "ok" or
352 "not ok" to the end user running the tests. Under --verbose, they
353 are shown to help debugging the tests.
359 If you need to skip tests you should do so by using the three-arg form
360 of the test_* functions (see the "Test harness library" section
363 test_expect_success PERL 'I need Perl' '
364 "$PERL_PATH" -e "hlagh() if unf_unf()"
367 The advantage of skipping tests like this is that platforms that don't
368 have the PERL and other optional dependencies get an indication of how
369 many tests they're missing.
371 If the test code is too hairy for that (i.e. does a lot of setup work
372 outside test assertions) you can also skip all remaining tests by
373 setting skip_all and immediately call test_done:
375 if ! test_have_prereq PERL
377 skip_all='skipping perl interface tests, perl not available'
381 The string you give to skip_all will be used as an explanation for why
382 the test was skipped.
387 Your script will be a sequence of tests, using helper functions
388 from the test harness library. At the end of the script, call
395 There are a handful helper functions defined in the test harness
396 library for your script to use.
398 - test_expect_success [<prereq>] <message> <script>
400 Usually takes two strings as parameters, and evaluates the
401 <script>. If it yields success, test is considered
402 successful. <message> should state what it is testing.
406 test_expect_success \
407 'git-write-tree should be able to write an empty tree.' \
408 'tree=$(git-write-tree)'
410 If you supply three parameters the first will be taken to be a
411 prerequisite; see the test_set_prereq and test_have_prereq
414 test_expect_success TTY 'git --paginate rev-list uses a pager' \
417 You can also supply a comma-separated list of prerequisites, in the
418 rare case where your test depends on more than one:
420 test_expect_success PERL,PYTHON 'yo dawg' \
421 ' test $(perl -E 'print eval "1 +" . qx[python -c "print 2"]') == "4" '
423 - test_expect_failure [<prereq>] <message> <script>
425 This is NOT the opposite of test_expect_success, but is used
426 to mark a test that demonstrates a known breakage. Unlike
427 the usual test_expect_success tests, which say "ok" on
428 success and "FAIL" on failure, this will say "FIXED" on
429 success and "still broken" on failure. Failures from these
430 tests won't cause -i (immediate) to stop.
432 Like test_expect_success this function can optionally use a three
433 argument invocation with a prerequisite as the first argument.
435 - test_debug <script>
437 This takes a single argument, <script>, and evaluates it only
438 when the test script is started with --debug command line
439 argument. This is primarily meant for use during the
440 development of a new test script.
444 Your test script must have test_done at the end. Its purpose
445 is to summarize successes and failures in the test script and
446 exit with an appropriate error code.
450 Make commit and tag names consistent by setting the author and
451 committer times to defined state. Subsequent calls will
452 advance the times by a fixed amount.
454 - test_commit <message> [<filename> [<contents>]]
456 Creates a commit with the given message, committing the given
457 file with the given contents (default for both is to reuse the
458 message string), and adds a tag (again reusing the message
459 string as name). Calls test_tick to make the SHA-1s
462 - test_merge <message> <commit-or-tag>
464 Merges the given rev using the given message. Like test_commit,
465 creates a tag and calls test_tick before committing.
467 - test_set_prereq <prereq>
469 Set a test prerequisite to be used later with test_have_prereq. The
470 test-lib will set some prerequisites for you, see the
471 "Prerequisites" section below for a full list of these.
473 Others you can set yourself and use later with either
474 test_have_prereq directly, or the three argument invocation of
475 test_expect_success and test_expect_failure.
477 - test_have_prereq <prereq>
479 Check if we have a prerequisite previously set with
480 test_set_prereq. The most common use of this directly is to skip
481 all the tests if we don't have some essential prerequisite:
483 if ! test_have_prereq PERL
485 skip_all='skipping perl interface tests, perl not available'
489 - test_external [<prereq>] <message> <external> <script>
491 Execute a <script> with an <external> interpreter (like perl). This
492 was added for tests like t9700-perl-git.sh which do most of their
493 work in an external test script.
496 'GitwebCache::*FileCache*' \
497 "$PERL_PATH" "$TEST_DIRECTORY"/t9503/test_cache_interface.pl
499 If the test is outputting its own TAP you should set the
500 test_external_has_tap variable somewhere before calling the first
501 test_external* function. See t9700-perl-git.sh for an example.
503 # The external test will outputs its own plan
504 test_external_has_tap=1
506 - test_external_without_stderr [<prereq>] <message> <external> <script>
508 Like test_external but fail if there's any output on stderr,
509 instead of checking the exit code.
511 test_external_without_stderr \
513 "$PERL_PATH" "$TEST_DIRECTORY"/t9700/test.pl
515 - test_expect_code <exit-code> <command>
517 Run a command and ensure that it exits with the given exit code.
520 test_expect_success 'Merge with d/f conflicts' '
521 test_expect_code 1 git merge "merge msg" B master
524 - test_must_fail <git-command>
526 Run a git command and ensure it fails in a controlled way. Use
527 this instead of "! <git-command>". When git-command dies due to a
528 segfault, test_must_fail diagnoses it as an error; "! <git-command>"
529 treats it as just another expected failure, which would let such a
532 - test_might_fail <git-command>
534 Similar to test_must_fail, but tolerate success, too. Use this
535 instead of "<git-command> || :" to catch failures due to segv.
537 - test_cmp <expected> <actual>
539 Check whether the content of the <actual> file matches the
540 <expected> file. This behaves like "cmp" but produces more
541 helpful output when the test is run with "-v" option.
543 - test_line_count (= | -lt | -ge | ...) <length> <file>
545 Check whether a file has the length it is expected to.
547 - test_path_is_file <path> [<diagnosis>]
548 test_path_is_dir <path> [<diagnosis>]
549 test_path_is_missing <path> [<diagnosis>]
551 Check if the named path is a file, if the named path is a
552 directory, or if the named path does not exist, respectively,
553 and fail otherwise, showing the <diagnosis> text.
555 - test_when_finished <script>
557 Prepend <script> to a list of commands to run to clean up
558 at the end of the current test. If some clean-up command
559 fails, the test will not pass.
563 test_expect_success 'branch pointing to non-commit' '
564 git rev-parse HEAD^{tree} >.git/refs/heads/invalid &&
565 test_when_finished "git update-ref -d refs/heads/invalid" &&
571 This command is useful for writing and debugging tests and must be
572 removed before submitting. It halts the execution of the test and
573 spawns a shell in the trash directory. Exit the shell to continue
576 test_expect_success 'test' '
577 git do-something >actual &&
579 test_cmp expected actual
585 These are the prerequisites that the test library predefines with
588 See the prereq argument to the test_* functions in the "Test harness
589 library" section above and the "test_have_prereq" function for how to
590 use these, and "test_set_prereq" for how to define your own.
594 Git wasn't compiled with NO_PERL=YesPlease or
595 NO_PYTHON=YesPlease. Wrap any tests that need Perl or Python in
600 The filesystem supports POSIX style permission bits.
604 Backslashes in pathspec are not directory separators. This is not
605 set on Windows. See 6fd1106a for details.
609 The process retains the same pid across exec(2). See fb9a2bea for
614 The filesystem we're on supports symbolic links. E.g. a FAT
615 filesystem doesn't support these. See 704a3143 for details.
619 Test is not run by root user, and an attempt to write to an
620 unwritable file is expected to fail correctly.
624 Git was compiled with USE_LIBPCRE=YesPlease. Wrap any tests
625 that use git-grep --perl-regexp or git-grep -P in these.
627 - CASE_INSENSITIVE_FS
629 Test is run on a case insensitive file system.
633 Test is run on a filesystem which converts decomposed utf-8 (nfd)
634 to precomposed utf-8 (nfc).
636 Tips for Writing Tests
637 ----------------------
639 As with any programming projects, existing programs are the best
640 source of the information. However, do _not_ emulate
641 t0000-basic.sh when writing your tests. The test is special in
642 that it tries to validate the very core of GIT. For example, it
643 knows that there will be 256 subdirectories under .git/objects/,
644 and it knows that the object ID of an empty tree is a certain
645 40-byte string. This is deliberately done so in t0000-basic.sh
646 because the things the very basic core test tries to achieve is
647 to serve as a basis for people who are changing the GIT internal
648 drastically. For these people, after making certain changes,
649 not seeing failures from the basic test _is_ a failure. And
650 such drastic changes to the core GIT that even changes these
651 otherwise supposedly stable object IDs should be accompanied by
652 an update to t0000-basic.sh.
654 However, other tests that simply rely on basic parts of the core
655 GIT working properly should not have that level of intimate
656 knowledge of the core GIT internals. If all the test scripts
657 hardcoded the object IDs like t0000-basic.sh does, that defeats
658 the purpose of t0000-basic.sh, which is to isolate that level of
659 validation in one place. Your test also ends up needing
660 updating when such a change to the internal happens, so do _not_
661 do it and leave the low level of validation to t0000-basic.sh.
666 You can use the coverage tests to find code paths that are not being
667 used or properly exercised yet.
669 To do that, run the coverage target at the top-level (not in the t/
674 That'll compile Git with GCC's coverage arguments, and generate a test
675 report with gcov after the tests finish. Running the coverage tests
676 can take a while, since running the tests in parallel is incompatible
677 with GCC's coverage mode.
679 After the tests have run you can generate a list of untested
682 make coverage-untested-functions
684 You can also generate a detailed per-file HTML report using the
685 Devel::Cover module. To install it do:
687 # On Debian or Ubuntu:
688 sudo aptitude install libdevel-cover-perl
690 # From the CPAN with cpanminus
691 curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - --sudo --self-upgrade
692 cpanm --sudo Devel::Cover
694 Then, at the top-level:
698 That'll generate a detailed cover report in the "cover_db_html"
699 directory, which you can then copy to a webserver, or inspect locally