Compiling/running unit tests

Unit tests will be automatically compiled if dependencies were met in ./configure and tests weren't explicitly disabled.

After configuring, they can be run with make check.

To run the ravend tests manually, launch src/test/test_raven. To recompile after a test file was modified, run make and then run the test again. If you modify a non-test file, use make -C src/test to recompile only what's needed to run the ravend tests.

To add more ravend tests, add BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE functions to the existing .cpp files in the test/ directory or add new .cpp files that implement new BOOST_AUTO_TEST_SUITE sections.

To run the raven-qt tests manually, launch src/qt/test/test_raven-qt

To add more raven-qt tests, add them to the src/qt/test/ directory and the src/qt/test/test_main.cpp file.

To display progress information the unit tests should be run as follows:

test_runner --show_progress=true --colour_output=true

Additional optional parameters are available. To display all optional parameters run:

test_runner --help

Debugging unit tests

To display what individual tests are running (as they are running) use the --log_level=message parameter.

By default the log messages from the Raven Core application are not echoed when running the unit tests. If it is desired to print this log data change the following from 'false' to 'true' in the test_raven.cpp file and uncomment three lines in the script\interpreter.cpp\ VerifyScript method and recompile:

src\test\test_raven.cpp:
fPrintToConsole = false;  <-to->  fPrintToConsole = true;

script\interpreter.cpp\ VerifyScript method, uncomment:
//std::string str;
//str.assign(ScriptErrorString(*serror));
//std::cout << str << std::endl;

Previously several individual tests had the 'fPrintToConsole' parameter defaulted to 'true' causingthe unit test log window to be filled with superfluous log-data making it appear that the tests were failing.

Running individual tests

Run test_raven --list_content to get a full list of available unit tests.

To run just the 'getarg_tests' (verbosely):

test_raven --run_test=getarg_tests

... or to run just the doubledash test:

test_raven --run_test=getarg_tests/doubledash_test

Note on adding test cases

The sources in this directory are unit test cases. Boost includes a unit testing framework, and since raven already uses boost, it makes sense to simply use this framework rather than require developers to configure some other framework (we want as few impediments to creating unit tests as possible).

The build system is setup to compile an executable called test_raven that runs all of the unit tests. The main source file is called test_raven.cpp. To add a new unit test file to our test suite you need to add the file to src/Makefile.test.include. The pattern is to create one test file for each class or source file for which you want to create unit tests. The file naming convention is <source_filename>_tests.cpp and such files should wrap their tests in a test suite called <source_filename>_tests. For an example of this pattern, examine uint256_tests.cpp.

For further reading, I found the following website to be helpful in explaining how the boost unit test framework works: http://www.alittlemadness.com/2009/03/31/c-unit-testing-with-boosttest/.