Unit tests

The goal is to add tests for all functions in libcurl. If functions are too big and complicated, we should split them into smaller and testable ones.

Build Unit Tests

./configure --enable-debug is required for the unit tests to build. To enable unit tests, there will be a separate static libcurl built that will be used exclusively for linking unit test programs. Just build everything as normal, and then you can run the unit test cases as well.

Run Unit Tests

Unit tests are run as part of the regular test suite. If you have built everything to run unit tests, to can do 'make test' at the root level. Or you can cd tests and make and then invoke individual unit tests with ./runtests.pl NNNN where NNNN is the specific test number.

Debug Unit Tests

If a specific test fails you will get told. The test case then has output left in the %LOGDIR subdirectory, but most importantly you can re-run the test again using gdb by doing ./runtests.pl -g NNNN. That is, add a -g to make it start up gdb and run the same case using that.

Write Unit Tests

We put tests that focus on an area or a specific function into a single C source file. The source file should be named unitNNNN.c where NNNN is a previously unused number.

Add your test to tests/unit/Makefile.inc (if it is a unit test). Add your test data file name to tests/data/Makefile.am

You also need a separate file called tests/data/testNNNN (using the same number) that describes your test case. See the test1300 file for inspiration and the tests/FILEFORMAT.md documentation.

For the actual C file, here's a simple example:

    #include "curlcheck.h"

    #include "a libcurl header.h" /* from the lib dir */

    static CURLcode unit_setup( void )
    {
      /* whatever you want done first */
      return CURLE_OK;
    }

    static void unit_stop( void )
    {
      /* done before shutting down and exiting */
    }

    UNITTEST_START

      /* here you start doing things and checking that the results are good */

      fail_unless( size == 0 , "initial size should be zero" );
      fail_if( head == NULL , "head should not be initiated to NULL" );

      /* you end the test code like this: */

    UNITTEST_STOP