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| >Writing A Test Case</H1 |
| ><P |
| >The easiest way to prepare a new test case is to base it |
| on an existing one for a similar situation. There are two major |
| categories of tests: batch or interactive. Batch oriented tests |
| are usually easier to write.</P |
| ><P |
| >The GCC tests are a good example of batch oriented tests. |
| All GCC tests consist primarily of a call to a single common |
| procedure, Since all the tests either have no output, or only |
| have a few warning messages when successfully compiled. Any |
| non-warning output is a test failure. All the C code needed is |
| kept in the test directory. The test driver, written in Tcl, |
| need only get a listing of all the C files in the directory, and |
| compile them all using a generic procedure. This procedure and a |
| few others supporting for these tests are kept in the library |
| module <TT |
| CLASS="FILENAME" |
| >lib/c-torture.exp</TT |
| > in the GCC test |
| suite. Most tests of this kind use very few |
| <SPAN |
| CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" |
| >expect</SPAN |
| > features, and are coded almost |
| purely in Tcl.</P |
| ><P |
| >Writing the complete suite of C tests, then, consisted of |
| these steps:</P |
| ><P |
| ></P |
| ><UL |
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| STYLE="list-style-type: disc" |
| ><P |
| >Copying all the C code into the test directory. |
| These tests were based on the C-torture test created by Torbjorn |
| Granlund (on behalf of the Free Software Foundation) for GCC |
| development.</P |
| ></LI |
| ><LI |
| STYLE="list-style-type: disc" |
| ><P |
| >Writing (and debugging) the generic Tcl procedures for |
| compilation.</P |
| ></LI |
| ><LI |
| STYLE="list-style-type: disc" |
| ><P |
| >Writing the simple test driver: its main task is to |
| search the directory (using the Tcl procedure |
| <I |
| CLASS="EMPHASIS" |
| >glob</I |
| > for filename expansion with wildcards) |
| and call a Tcl procedure with each filename. It also checks for |
| a few errors from the testing procedure.</P |
| ></LI |
| ></UL |
| ><P |
| >Testing interactive programs is intrinsically more |
| complex. Tests for most interactive programs require some trial |
| and error before they are complete.</P |
| ><P |
| >However, some interactive programs can be tested in a |
| simple fashion reminiscent of batch tests. For example, prior |
| to the creation of DejaGnu, the GDB distribution already |
| included a wide-ranging testing procedure. This procedure was |
| very robust, and had already undergone much more debugging and |
| error checking than many recent DejaGnu test cases. |
| Accordingly, the best approach was simply to encapsulate the |
| existing GDB tests, for reporting purposes. Thereafter, new GDB |
| tests built up a family of Tcl procedures specialized for GDB |
| testing.</P |
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