15.1 Simple Tests

If the variable TESTS is defined, its value is taken to be a list of programs or scripts to run in order to do the testing. Programs needing data files should look for them in srcdir (which is both an environment variable and a make variable) so they work when building in a separate directory (see Build Directories in The Autoconf Manual), and in particular for the distcheck rule (see What Goes in a Distribution).

The number of failures will be printed at the end of the run. If a given test program exits with a status of 77, then its result is ignored in the final count. This feature allows non-portable tests to be ignored in environments where they don’t make sense.

The variable TESTS_ENVIRONMENT can be used to set environment variables for the test run; the environment variable srcdir is set in the rule. If all your test programs are scripts, you can also set TESTS_ENVIRONMENT to an invocation of the shell (e.g. ‘$(SHELL) -x’ can be useful for debugging the tests), or any other interpreter. For instance the following setup is used by the Automake package to run four tests in Perl.

TESTS_ENVIRONMENT = $(PERL) -Mstrict -I $(top_srcdir)/lib -w
TESTS = Condition.pl DisjConditions.pl Version.pl Wrap.pl

You may define the variable XFAIL_TESTS to a list of tests (usually a subset of TESTS) that are expected to fail. This will reverse the result of those tests.

Automake ensures that each file listed in TESTS is built before any tests are run; you can list both source and derived programs (or scripts) in TESTS; the generated rule will look both in srcdir and .. For instance, you might want to run a C program as a test. To do this you would list its name in TESTS and also in check_PROGRAMS, and then specify it as you would any other program.

Programs listed in check_PROGRAMS (and check_LIBRARIES, check_LTLIBRARIES...) are only built during make check, not during make all. You should list there any program needed by your tests that does not need to be built by make all. Note that check_PROGRAMS are not automatically added to TESTS because check_PROGRAMS usually lists programs used by the tests, not the tests themselves. Of course you can set TESTS = $(check_PROGRAMS) if all your programs are test cases.

15.2 DejaGnu Tests

If dejagnu appears in AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS, then a dejagnu-based test suite is assumed. The variable DEJATOOL is a list of names that are passed, one at a time, as the --tool argument to runtest invocations; it defaults to the name of the package.

The variable RUNTESTDEFAULTFLAGS holds the --tool and --srcdir flags that are passed to dejagnu by default; this can be overridden if necessary.

The variables EXPECT and RUNTEST can also be overridden to provide project-specific values. For instance, you will need to do this if you are testing a compiler toolchain, because the default values do not take into account host and target names.

The contents of the variable RUNTESTFLAGS are passed to the runtest invocation. This is considered a “user variable” (see Variables reserved for the user). If you need to set runtest flags in Makefile.am, you can use AM_RUNTESTFLAGS instead.

Automake will generate rules to create a local site.exp file, defining various variables detected by configure. This file is automatically read by DejaGnu. It is OK for the user of a package to edit this file in order to tune the test suite. However this is not the place where the test suite author should define new variables: this should be done elsewhere in the real test suite code. Especially, site.exp should not be distributed.

For more information regarding DejaGnu test suites, see The DejaGnu Manual.

In either case, the testing is done via ‘make check’.

15.3 Install Tests

The installcheck target is available to the user as a way to run any tests after the package has been installed. You can add tests to this by writing an installcheck-local rule.