1ATF-TEST-CASE(4) BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual ATF-TEST-CASE(4)
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4 atf-test-case — generic description of test cases
5
7 A test case is a piece of code that stress-tests a specific feature of
8 the software. This feature is typically self-contained enough, either in
9 the amount of code that implements it or in the general idea that
10 describes it, to warrant its independent testing. Given this, test cases
11 are very fine-grained, but they attempt to group similar smaller tests
12 which are semantically related.
13 A test case is defined by three components regardless of the language it
15 is implemented in: a header, a body and a cleanup routine. The header
16 is, basically, a declarative piece of code that defines several proper‐
17 ties to describe what the test case does and how it behaves. In other
18 words: it defines the test case's meta-data, further described in the
19 Meta-data section. The body is the test case itself. It executes all
20 actions needed to reproduce the test, and checks for failures. This body
21 is only executed if the abstract conditions specified by the header are
22 met. The cleanup routine is a piece of code always executed after the
23 body, regardless of the exit status of the test case. It can be used to
24 undo side-effects of the test case. Note that almost all side-effects of
25 a test case are automatically cleaned up by the library; this is
26 explained in more detail in the rest of this document.
27 It is extremely important to keep the separation between a test case's
29 header and body well-defined, because the header is always parsed,
30 whereas the body is only executed when the conditions defined in the
31 header are met and when the user specifies that test case.
32 At last, test cases are always contained into test programs. The test
34 programs act as a front-end to them, providing a consistent interface to
35 the user and several APIs to ease their implementation.
36 Results
38 Upon termination, a test case reports a status and, optionally, a textual
39 reason describing why the test reported such status. The caller must
40 ensure that the test case really performed the task that its status
41 describes, as the test program may be bogus and therefore providing a
42 misleading result (e.g. providing a result that indicates success but the
43 error code of the program says otherwise).
44 The possible exit status of a test case are one of the following:
46 expected_death The test case expects to terminate abruptly.
48 expected_exit The test case expects to exit cleanly.
50 expected_failure The test case expects to exit with a controller
52 fatal/non-fatal failure. If this happens, the test
53 program exits with a success error code.
54 expected_signal The test case expects to receive a signal that makes
56 it terminate.
57 expected_timeout The test case expects to execute for longer than its
59 timeout.
60 passed The test case was executed successfully. The test
62 program exits with a success error code.
63 skipped The test case could not be executed because some pre‐
65 conditions were not met. This is not a failure
66 because it can typically be resolved by adjusting the
67 system to meet the necessary conditions. This is
68 always accompanied by a reason, a message describing
69 why the test was skipped. The test program exits
70 with a success error code.
71 failed An error appeared during the execution of the test
73 case. This is always accompanied by a reason, a mes‐
74 sage describing why the test failed. The test pro‐
75 gram exits with a failure error code.
76 The usefulness of the ‘expected_*’ results comes when writing test cases
78 that verify known failures caused, in general, due to programming errors
79 (aka bugs). Whenever the faulty condition that the ‘expected_*’ result
80 is trying to cover is fixed, then the test case will be reported as
81 ‘failed’ and the developer will have to adjust it to match its new condi‐
82 tion.
83 It is important to note that all ‘expected_*’ results are only provided
85 as a hint to the caller; the caller must verify that the test case did
86 actually terminate as the expected condition says.
87 Input/output
89 Test cases are free to print whatever they want to their stdout(4) and
90 stderr(4) file descriptors. They are, in fact, encouraged to print sta‐
91 tus information as they execute to keep the user informed of their
92 actions. This is specially important for long test cases.
93 Test cases will log their results to an auxiliary file, which is then
95 collected by the test program they are contained in. The developer need
96 not care about this as long as he uses the correct APIs to implement the
97 test cases.
98 The standard input of the test cases is unconditionally connected to
100 ‘/dev/zero’.
101 Meta-data
103 The following list describes all meta-data properties interpreted inter‐
104 nally by ATF. You are free to define new properties in your test cases
105 and use them as you wish, but non-standard properties must be prefixed by
106 ‘X-’.
107 descr Type: textual. Required.
109 A brief textual description of the test case's pur‐
111 pose. Will be shown to the user in reports. Also
112 good for documentation purposes.
113 has.cleanup Type: boolean. Optional.
115 If set to true, specifies that the test case has a
117 cleanup routine that has to be executed by atf-run(1)
118 during the cleanup phase of the execution. This prop‐
119 erty is automatically set by the framework when defin‐
120 ing a test case with a cleanup routine, so it should
121 never be set by hand.
122 ident Type: textual. Required.
124 The test case's identifier. Must be unique inside the
126 test program and should be short but descriptive.
127 require.arch Type: textual. Optional.
129 A whitespace separated list of architectures that the
131 test case can be run under without causing errors due
132 to an architecture mismatch.
133 require.config Type: textual. Optional.
135 A whitespace separated list of configuration variables
137 that must be defined to execute the test case. If any
138 of the required variables is not defined, the test
139 case is skipped.
140 require.files Type: textual. Optional.
142 A whitespace separated list of files that must be
144 present to execute the test case. The names of these
145 files must be absolute paths. If any of the required
146 files is not found, the test case is skipped.
147 require.machine Type: textual. Optional.
149 A whitespace separated list of machine types that the
151 test case can be run under without causing errors due
152 to a machine type mismatch.
153 require.memory Type: integer. Optional. Specifies the minimum
155 amount of physical memory needed by the test. The
156 value can have a size suffix such as ‘K’, ‘M’, ‘G’ or
157 ‘T’ to make the amount of bytes easier to type and
158 read.
159 require.progs Type: textual. Optional.
161 A whitespace separated list of programs that must be
163 present to execute the test case. These can be given
164 as plain names, in which case they are looked in the
165 user's PATH, or as absolute paths. If any of the
166 required programs is not found, the test case is
167 skipped.
168 require.user Type: textual. Optional.
170 The required privileges to execute the test case. Can
172 be one of ‘root’ or ‘unprivileged’.
173 If the test case is running as a regular user and this
175 property is ‘root’, the test case is skipped.
176 If the test case is running as root and this property
178 is ‘unprivileged’, atf-run(1) will automatically drop
179 the privileges if the ‘unprivileged-user’ configura‐
180 tion property is set; otherwise the test case is
181 skipped.
182 timeout Type: integral. Optional; defaults to ‘300’.
184 Specifies the maximum amount of time the test case can
186 run. This is particularly useful because some tests
187 can stall either because they are incorrectly coded or
188 because they trigger an anomalous behavior of the pro‐
189 gram. It is not acceptable for these tests to stall
190 the whole execution of the test program.
191 Can optionally be set to zero, in which case the test
193 case has no run-time limit. This is discouraged.
194 Environment
196 Every time a test case is executed, several environment variables are
197 cleared or reseted to sane values to ensure they do not make the test
198 fail due to unexpected conditions. These variables are:
199 HOME Set to the work directory's path.
201 LANG Undefined.
203 LC_ALL Undefined.
205 LC_COLLATE Undefined.
207 LC_CTYPE Undefined.
209 LC_MESSAGES Undefined.
211 LC_MONETARY Undefined.
213 LC_NUMERIC Undefined.
215 LC_TIME Undefined.
217 TZ Hardcoded to ‘UTC’.
219 Work directories
221 The test program always creates a temporary directory and switches to it
222 before running the test case's body. This way the test case is free to
223 modify its current directory as it wishes, and the runtime engine will be
224 able to clean it up later on in a safe way, removing any traces of its
225 execution from the system. To do so, the runtime engine will perform a
226 recursive removal of the work directory without crossing mount points; if
227 a mount point is found, the file system will be unmounted (if possible).
228 File creation mode mask (umask)
230 Test cases are always executed with a file creation mode mask (umask) of
231 ‘0022’. The test case's code is free to change this during execution.
232
234 atf-run(1), atf-test-program(1), atf-formats(5), atf(7)
235BSD January 13, 2011 BSD