make check
+ You can use `-jN' for faster completion (it even helps on a
+ uniprocessor system, due to unavoidable sleep delays, as
+ noted below).
Interpretation
--------------
-----------------------------
Each test is a script. In a non-VPATH build you can run them
- directly, they will be verbose.
+ directly, they will be verbose. By default, verbose output of
+ a test foo.test is retained in the log file foo.log. A summary
+ log is created in the file test-suite.log.
- Otherwise, you can invoke make as follows, just replace the list
- of tests by those you want to check.
+ You can limit the set of files using the TESTS variable, and
+ enable detailed test output at the end of the test run with the
+ VERBOSE variable:
env VERBOSE=x TESTS='first.test second.test ...' make -e check
Reporting failures
------------------
- Send verbose output of failing tests to <bug-automake@gnu.org>,
- along with the usual version numbers (which Automake, which
- Autoconf, which operating system, which make version, which shell,
- etc.)
+ Send verbose output, i.e., the contents of test-suite.log, of failing
+ tests to <bug-automake@gnu.org>, along with the usual version numbers
+ (which Automake, which Autoconf, which operating system, which make
+ version, which shell, etc.)
Use `required=...' for required tools.
- Include ./defs (see other tests).
+ Include ./defs (see other tests) for normal tests, ./defs-p for tests
+ that use the `parallel-tests' option. For the latter, use a name that
+ ends in `-p.test' and does not clash with any generated tests in the
+ suite.
Use `set -e' to catch failures you might not have thought of.
Use `cat' or `grep' to display (part of) files that may be
interesting for debugging, so that when a user send a verbose
- output we don't have to ask him for more details.
+ output we don't have to ask him for more details. Display stderr
+ output on the stderr file descriptor. If some redirected command
+ is likely to fail, and `set -e' is in effect, display its output
+ even in the failure case, before exiting.
+
+ Use `Exit' rather than `exit' to abort a test.
It's more important to make sure that a feature works, than
make sure that Automake's output looks correct. It might look
- correct and still fails to work. In other words, prefer
+ correct and still fail to work. In other words, prefer
running `make' over grepping `Makefile.in' (or do both).
If you run $AUTOMAKE or $AUTOCONF several times in the same test
rm -rf autom4te.cache
before the following runs. On fast machines the new `configure.in'
could otherwise have the same timestamp as the old `autom4te.cache'.
+ Alternatively, use `--force' for subsequent runs of the tools.
Use filenames with two consecutive spaces when testing that some
code preserves filenames with spaces. This will catch errors like
Do not
------
- Do not test an Automake error with `$AUTOMAKE && exit 1', or in three
+ Do not test an Automake error with `$AUTOMAKE && Exit 1', or in three
years we'll discover that this test failed for some other bogus reason.
This happened many times. Better use something like
AUTOMAKE_fails