Provided by: aegis_4.24.3-3_amd64 
NAME
aegis test - run tests
SYNOPSIS
aegis -Test [ option... ][ name=value ][ file-name... ]
aegis -Test -INDependent [ option... ][ name=value ][ file-name... ]
aegis -Test -List [ option... ]
aegis -Test -Help
DESCRIPTION
The aegis -Test command is used to run tests. If no files are named, all relevant tests
are run. By default both automatic and manual tests are run.
You may name directories on the command line, and all relevant tests in that directory
tree in the change will be run. It is an error if there are no relevant tests.
Each architecture must be tested separately. This is because there may be subtle
problems that are only revealed on some architectures. Some projects may also have
different code for different architectures.
The status of the last test run is remembered so that tests are not run if there is no
need. (This does not apply to -REGression tests, unfortunately.) Tests must be re-run
if the test previously failed, if the test file has changed, if there has been a build,
and for each architecture.
name=value
You can add name=value pairs to the command line, these will be passed unchanged to the
test command. Usually on the end of the command line, but this can be changed in the
project configuration file.
The -force option results in an implicit force=1 variable being added to the list of
variable assignments, and thus added to the end of the command. This is of most use when
using the batch_test_command filed of the project configuration file.
This may initially look like a development process end-run, allowing test scripts to be
written so that they give all the right answers without actually doing anything. You
have always been able to do this with environment variables, so this isn't anything new.
It is possible to get all of the variable assignments to turn into environment variables
by putting $var at the start of the command, before the name of the shell, rather than at
the default location at the end of the command.
File Name Interpretation
The aegis program will attempt to determine the project file names from the file names
given on the command line. All file names are stored within aegis projects as relative
to the root of the baseline directory tree. The development directory and the
integration directory are shadows of this baseline directory, and so these relative names
apply here, too. Files named on the command line are first converted to absolute paths
if necessary. They are then compared with the baseline path, the development directory
path, and the integration directory path, to determine a baseline-relative name. It is
an error if the file named is outside one of these directory trees.
The -BAse_RElative option may be used to cause relative filenames to be interpreted as
relative to the baseline path; absolute filenames will still be compared with the various
paths in order to determine a baseline-relative name.
The relative_filename_preference in the user configuration file may be used to modify
this default behavior. See aeuconf(5) for more information.
TEST PROCESS
Each change is required to be accompanied by tests, and those tests are required to be
run against the built development directory, and they must pass. This ensures that new
functionality is accompanied by tests to verify its correctness, and bug fixes are
accompanied by tests which confirm that the bug has been fixed.
Regression Tests
Tests are treated as any other source file, and are maintained in the baseline and
history with all other source files. The tests which must accompany every change
accumulate in the project baseline, providing a definition of correct function for the
baseline. These accumulated tests may be executed using an “aegis -REGression” command,
to verify that the project will not “regress” as a result of a change.
Baseline Tests
Bug fixes are required to have their tests fail against the project baseline (in contrast
to the development directory). This ensures that the test actually demonstrates the bug
in the baseline, as well as demonstrating that it is fixed by the change. New
functionality trivially fails against the baseline, and so aegis does not attempt to
guess if a test is a bug fix test or new functionality test, it simply requires tests to
fail against the baseline.
This requirement applies both to new tests being created by a change and also to tests
which have been copied into a change for modification.
Reviewing Tests
Reviewers may be confident that aegis has enforced the test requirements; that a change
must have tests, that the change must build, that the tests pass against the development
directory, and that the tests fail against the baseline. These conditions are enforced
by aede(1) and the change will not be advanced to the being reviewed state until these
conditions are met. Reviewers should thus review tests for completeness of coverage of
the code in the change, and insensitivity to changes in the execution environment (e.g.
not date sensitive). Reviewers should also use “aegis -list change_details” to verify
that a change does or does not have testing exemptions.
Exemptions
Various test exemptions may be granted by project administrators, see aepa(1) and
aepattr(5) for more information. Copying tests into a change, or adding new tests to a
change, may cancel those exemptions.
TEST COMMAND CONFIGURATION
The command used to execute tests is defined by the test_command field in the project
configuration file (see aepconf(5) for more information), this defaults to using the
Bourne shell if not set. The current directory will be the top of the appropriate
directory tree. If tests require temporary files, they should create them in /tmp, as a
test cannot expect to have write permission in the current directory.
If you want to use a more sophisticated test engine, rather than a simple shell script,
but this test engine does not return result codes suitable for use with aegis, you could
wrap it in a shell script which re-writes the exit status into the values aegis expects.
You could also achieve the same results by writing a more complex test_command in the
project config file.
It is also possible to write test commands which are able to test more than one file at
once. This is controlled by the batch_test_command field of the project config file. In
this case, the ${output} substitution indicates the name of a file the test command must
create, in aetest(5) format, to contain the results of the tests run. This is often used
on systems with multiple CPUs or the ability to distribute jobs across several computers
on a network.
Substitutions
All of the aesub(5) substitutions are available in the test commands. Some of them are
of particular note:
ARCHitecture
This substitution is replaced by the name of the architecture to be tested.
Search_Path
This substitution is replaced by a colon separated list of absolute paths to
search when looking for test support files.
Search_Path_Executable
This substitution is replaced by a colon separated list of absolute paths to
search when looking for executable support files (library files and sub-
commands).
Most of the time $Search_Path_Executable are exactly the same. However, during “aegis -t
-bl” they will be different, with $Seach_Path starting at the development directory (the
test being run) and $Seach_Path_Executable starting at the baseline (the executable being
run).
Test Result Codes
As each test is run (via the test_command field in the project config file), aegis
determines whether the test succeeded or failed by looking at its exit status. This exit
status is mostly as expected for UNIX commands.
Success
A test should exit 0 to indicate success, i.e. that the specific function under test
worked as expected.
Failure
A test should exit 1 to indicate failure, i.e. that the specific function under test
did not work as expected.
No Result
A test should exit 2 to indicate no result, i.e. that the specific function under
test could not be exercised because something else went wrong. For example, running
out of disk space when creating the test input files in the /tmp directory.
Skipped
A test should exit 77 to indicate that it was skipped. This is usually to do with
the current architecture not being meaningful. Whenever possible, use “No Result”
instead. (The value was chosen for compatibility with other test systems.)
Actually, any exit code other than 0, 1 or 77 will be interpreted as “no result”.
However, always using 0, 1, 2 or 77 means that if a new result code is required by a
later release of Aegis your existing tests will continue to work.
TEST CORRELATIONS
The “aegis -Test -SUGgest” command may be used to have aegis suggest suitable regression
tests for your change, based on the source files in your change. This automatically
focuses testing effort to relevant tests, reducing the number of regression tests
necessary to be confident that you have not introduced a bug.
The test correlations are generated by the “aegis -Integrate_Pass” command, which
associates each test in the change with each source file in the change. Thus, each
source file accumulates a list of tests which have been associated with it in the past.
This is not as exact as code coverage analysis, but is a reasonable approximation in
practice.
The aecp(1) and aenf(1) commands are used to associate files with a change. While they
do not actively perform the association, these are the files used by aeipass(1) and
aet(1) to determine which source files are associated with which tests.
Test Correlation Accuracy
Assuming that the testing correlations are accurate and that the tests are evenly
distributed across the function space, there will be a less than 1/number chance that a
relevant test has not been run by the “aegis -Test -SUGgest number” command. A small
amount of noise is added to the test weighting, so that unexpected things are sometimes
tested, and the same tests are not run every time.
Test correlation accuracy can be improved by ensuring that:
• Each change should be strongly focused, with no gratuitous file inclusions. This
avoids spurious correlations.
• Each item of new functionality should be added in an individual change, rather than
several together. This strongly correlates tests with functionality.
• Each bug should be fixed in an individual change, rather than several together. This
strongly correlates tests with functionality.
• Test correlations will be lost if files are moved. This is because correlations are by
name.
The best way for tests to correlate accurately with source files is when a change
contains a test and exactly those files relating to the functionality under test. Too
many spurious files will weaken the usefulness of the testing correlations.
OPTIONS
The following options are understood:
-AUTOmatic
This option may be used to specify automatic tests. Automatic tests require no
human assistance.
-BaseLine
This option may be used to specify that the project baseline is the subject of
the command.
-BAse_RElative
This option may be used to cause relative filenames to be considered relative to
the base of the source tree. See aeuconf(5) for the corresponding user
preference.
-CUrrent_RElative
This option may be used to cause relative filenames to be considered relative to
the current directory. This is usually the default. See aeuconf(5) for the
corresponding user preference.
-Change number
This option may be used to specify a particular change within a project. See
aegis(1) for a complete description of this option.
-FOrce This option may be used to specify that all tests should be run, even if the
status of the last test run indicates that there is no need to run a specific
test.
-Help
This option may be used to obtain more information about how to use the aegis
program.
-INDependent
This option is used to specify that the test is to be run independent of any
particular change. If no tests are named, all tests in the baseline will be run.
-List
This option may be used to obtain a list of suitable subjects for this command.
The list may be more general than expected.
-MANual This option may be used to specify manual tests. Manual tests require some human
intervention, e.g.: confirmation of some screen behavior (X11, for instance), or
some user action, "unplug ethernet cable now".
-Not_Logging
This option may be used to disable the automatic logging of output and errors to
a file. This is often useful when several aegis commands are combined in a shell
script.
-PErsevere
This option may be used to specify that all tests should be run, even if some
fail. Defaults to the user's persevere_preference if not specified, see
aeuconf(5) for more information.
-No_PErsevere
This option may be used to specify that the test run should stop after the first
failure. Defaults to the user's persevere_preference if not specified, see
aeuconf(5) for more information.
-Project name
This option may be used to select the project of interest. When no -Project
option is specified, the AEGIS_PROJECT environment variable is consulted. If
that does not exist, the user's $HOME/.aegisrc file is examined for a default
project field (see aeuconf(5) for more information). If that does not exist,
when the user is only working on changes within a single project, the project
name defaults to that project. Otherwise, it is an error.
-PROGress
This option may be used to specify that progress messages should be issued before
each test run or before each batch test run in case batch_test_command field
specified in project config file (see aeuconf(5) for more information).
-No_PROGress
This option may be used to specify that progress messages should be suppressed.
This is the default.
-REGression
This option is used to specify that the regression test suite is to be run. The
regression test suite consists of all tests in the baseline which do not appear
in the change. It is an error if there are no regression tests. You may not
name tests on the command line when using the -REGression option. You may name
individual tests to be run on the command line, without using the -REGression
option; if they are not part of the change, the tests of the same name in the
baseline will be run.
-SUGgest [ number ]
The “aegis -Integrate_Pass” command collects test correlation statistics when
changes are integrated. This option may be used to request that aegis suggest
which tests should be run, using these testing correlations. If no number is
specified, 10 tests will be suggested. This option implies the -REGression
option.
-SUGgest_Limit minutes
This option may be used to limit the number of tests to a certain number of
minutes. They will be run from most relevant to least relevant.
-SUGgest_Noise number
This option may be used to control the amount of noise injected into the test
selection performed by the -SUGgest option. The number is a percentage of noise
to be injected. Defaults to 10 if not specified. The injection of noise ensures
that a variety of tests are run on subsequent runs, and also some from left-field
as a sanity check.
-TERse
This option may be used to cause listings to produce the bare minimum of
information. It is usually useful for shell scripts.
-Verbose
This option may be used to cause aegis to produce more output. By default aegis
only produces output on errors. When used with the -List option this option
causes column headings to be added.
-Wait This option may be used to require Aegis commands to wait for access locks, if
they cannot be obtained immediately. Defaults to the user's lock_wait_preference
if not specified, see aeuconf(5) for more information.
-No_Wait
This option may be used to require Aegis commands to emit a fatal error if access
locks cannot be obtained immediately. Defaults to the user's
lock_wait_preference if not specified, see aeuconf(5) for more information.
See also aegis(1) for options common to all aegis commands.
All options may be abbreviated; the abbreviation is documented as the upper case letters,
all lower case letters and underscores (_) are optional. You must use consecutive
sequences of optional letters.
All options are case insensitive, you may type them in upper case or lower case or a
combination of both, case is not important.
For example: the arguments "-project, "-PROJ" and "-p" are all interpreted to mean the
-Project option. The argument "-prj" will not be understood, because consecutive
optional characters were not supplied.
Options and other command line arguments may be mixed arbitrarily on the command line,
after the function selectors.
The GNU long option names are understood. Since all option names for aegis are long,
this means ignoring the extra leading '-'. The "--option=value" convention is also
understood.
RECOMMENDED ALIAS
The recommended alias for this command is
csh% alias aet 'aegis -t \!* -v'
sh$ aet(){aegis -t "$@" -v}
ERRORS
It is an error if the change is not in one of the being developed or being integrated
states.
It is an error if the change is not assigned to the current user.
It is an error if your have no relevant tests and no relevant exemption.
EXIT STATUS
The aegis command will exit with a status of 1 on any error. The aegis command will only
exit with a status of 0 if there are no errors.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See aegis(1) for a list of environment variables which may affect this command. See
aepconf(5) for the project configuration file's project_specific field for how to set
environment variables for all commands executed by Aegis.
SEE ALSO
aeb(1) build a change
aeca(1) modify the attributes of a change
aedb(1) begin development of a change
aeib(1) begin integration of a change
aent(1) add a new test to a change
aecp(1) copy an existing test into a change
aepconf(5)
project configuration file format
aeuconf(5)
user configuration file format
COPYRIGHT
aegis version 4.24.3.D001
Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,
2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Peter Miller
The aegis program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use the 'aegis -VERSion
License' command. This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under
certain conditions; for details use the 'aegis -VERSion License' command.
AUTHOR
Peter Miller E-Mail: millerp@canb.auug.org.au
/\/\* WWW: http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/