Add a "Do's, don'ts & things to keep in mind" subsection to the
"Writing Tests" documentation. Much of this is based on Junio C
Hamano's "Test your stuff" section in
<7vhbkj2kcr.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>.
I turned it into a list of do's and don'ts to make it easier to skim
it, and integrated my note that a TAP harness will get confused if you
print "ok" or "not ok" at the beginning of a line.
Thad had to be fixed in 335f87871fe5aa6b3fd55b2b4e80f16fe9681483 when
TAP support was introduced.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx>
---
t/README | 78 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 78 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/t/README b/t/README
index 4079635..e481657 100644
--- a/t/README
+++ b/t/README
@@ -231,6 +231,84 @@ This test harness library does the following things:
consistently when command line arguments --verbose (or -v),
--debug (or -d), and --immediate (or -i) is given.
+Do's, don'ts & things to keep in mind
+-------------------------------------
+
+Here's a few examples of things you probably should and shouldn't do
+when writing tests.
+
+Do:
+
+ - Put as much code as possible inside test_expect_success and other
+ assertions.
+
+ Even code that isn't a test per se, but merely some setup code
+ should be inside a test assertion if at all possible. Test scripts
+ should only have trivial code outside of their assertions.
+
+ - Chain your test assertions
+
+ Write test code like this:
+
+ git merge foo &&
+ git push bar &&
+ test ...
+
+ Instead of:
+
+ git merge hla
+ git push gh
+ test ...
+
+ That way all of the commands in your tests will succeed or fail. If
+ you must ignore the return value of something (e.g. the return
+ value of export is unportable) it's best to indicate so explicitly
+ with a semicolon:
+
+ export HLAGH;
+ git merge hla &&
+ git push gh &&
+ test ...
+
+Don't:
+
+ - exit() within a <script> part.
+
+ The harness will catch this as a programming error of the test.
+ Use test_done instead if you need to stop the tests early (see
+ "Skipping tests" below).
+
+ - Break the TAP output
+
+ The raw output from your test might be interpreted by a TAP
+ harness. You usually don't have to worry about that. TAP harnesses
+ will ignore everything they don't know about, but don't step on
+ their toes in these areas:
+
+ - Don't print lines like "$x..$y" where $x and $y are integers.
+
+ - Don't print lines that begin with "ok" or "not ok".
+
+ A TAP harness expect a line that begins with either "ok" and "not
+ ok" to signal a test passed or failed (and our harness already
+ produces such lines), so your script shouldn't emit such lines to
+ their output.
+
+ You can glean some further possible issues from the TAP grammar
+ (see http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?TAP::Parser::Grammar#TAP_Grammar)
+ but the best indication is to just run the tests with prove(1),
+ it'll complain if anything is amiss.
+
+Keep in mind:
+
+ - That what you print to stderr and stdout is usually ignored
+
+ Inside <script> part, the standard output and standard error
+ streams are discarded, and the test harness only reports "ok" or
+ "not ok" to the end user running the tests. Under --verbose, they
+ are shown to help debugging the tests.
+
+
Skipping tests
--------------
--
1.7.1.251.g92a7
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