.\" Copyright 2011 Lars Wirzenius .\" .\" This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify .\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by .\" the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or .\" (at your option) any later version. .\" .\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, .\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of .\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the .\" GNU General Public License for more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License .\" along with this program. If not, see . .\" .TH CMDTEST 1 .SH NAME cmdtest \- blackbox testing of Unix command line tools .SH SYNOPSIS .SH DESCRIPTION .B cmdtest black box tests Unix command line tools. Given some test scripts, their inputs, and expected outputs, it verifies that the command line produces the expected output. If not, it reports problems, and shows the differences. .PP Each test case .I foo consists of the following files: .TP .I foo.script a script to run the test (this is required) .TP .I foo.stdin the file fed to standard input .TP .I foo.stdout the expected output to the standard output .TP .I foo.stderr the expected output to the standard error .TP .I foo.exit the expected exit code .TP .I foo.setup a shell script to run before the test .TP .I foo.teardown a shell script to run after test .PP Usually, a single test is not enough. All tests are put into the same directory, and they may share some setup and teardown code: .TP .I setup-once a shell script to run once, before any tests .TP .I setup a shell script to run before each test .TP .I teardown a shell script to run after each test .TP .I teardown-once a shell script to run once, after all tests .PP .B cmdtest is given the name of the directory with all the tests, or several such directories, and it does the following: .PP .na .nh \(bu execute .I setup-once .PP \(bu for each test case (unique prefix .IR foo ): .RS .HP 2 \(em execute .I setup .HP 2 \(em execute .I foo.setup .HP 2 \(em execute the command, by running .IR foo.script , and redirecting standard input to come from .IR foo.stdin , and capturing standard output and error and exit codes .HP 2 \(em execute .I foo.teardown .HP 2 \(em execute .I teardown .HP 2 \(em report result of test: does exit code match .IR foo.exit , standard output match .IR foo.stdout , and standard error match .IR foo.stderr ? .RE .fi .hy .PP \(bu execute .I teardown-once .PP Except for .IR foo.script , all of these files are optional. If a setup or teardown script is missing, it is simply not executed. If one of the standard input, output, or error files is missing, it is treated as if it were empty. If the exit code file is missing, it is treated as if it specified an exit code of zero. .PP The shell scripts may use the following environment variables: .TP .B DATADIR a temporary directory where files may be created by the test .TP .B TESTNAME name of the current test (will be empty for .B setup-once and .BR teardown-once ) .TP .B SRCDIR directory from which .B cmdtest was launched .SH OPTIONS .SH EXAMPLE To test that the .BR echo (1) command outputs the expected string, create a file called .I echo-tests/hello.script containing the following content: .IP .nf #!/bin/sh echo hello, world .fi .PP Also create the file .I echo-tests/hello.stdout containing: .IP hello, world .PP Then you can run the tests: .IP .nf $ cmdtest echo-tests test 1/1 1/1 tests OK, 0 failures .fi .PP If you change the stdout file to be something else, .B cmdtest will report the differences: .IP .nf $ cmdtest echo-tests FAIL: hello: stdout diff: --- echo-tests/hello.stdout 2011-09-11 19:14:47 +0100 +++ echo-tests/hello.stdout-actual 2011-09-11 19:14:49 +0100 @@ -1 +1 @@ -something else +hello, world test 1/1 0/1 tests OK, 1 failures .fi .PP Furthermore, the .I echo-tests directory will contain the actual output files, and diffs from the expected files. If one of the actual output files is actually correct, you can actualy rename it to be the expected file. Actually, that's a very convenient way of creating the expected output files: you run the test, fixing things, until you've manually checked the actual output is correct, then you rename the file. .SH "SEE ALSO" .BR cliapp (5).