libstdc++-v3 Testing Instructions
Author: bkoz@gcc.gnu.org (Benjamin Kosnik)
Description: README for the GNU libstdc++ effort.
Keywords: c++, libstdc++, test, regression, g++

# Testing Details

The latest version of this document is always available at http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/test.html.

To the libstdc++-v3 homepage.

## Contents

- Testsuite organization and naming conventions
- Utilities: abicheck and libv3test
- How to write a new test case
- Options for running the tests
- Running debug-mode tests
- Future
- DejaGNU internals

## Testsuite organization and naming conventions

The directory libsrcdir/testsuite contains the test files, test harness, and utility information for verifying the correctness of C++ library on a given host. It includes the following directories, each named after a specific chapter of the C++ standard, and each containing test files or subdirectories of test files that test for that particular part of the standard.

    17_intro
    18_support
    19_diagnostics
    20_util
    21_strings
    22_locale
    23_containers
    25_algorithms
    26_numerics
    27_io

In addition, the following directories include test files:

    backward	  Tests for backwards compatibility and deprecated features.
    demangle	  Tests for __cxa_demangle, the IA 64 C++ ABI demangler
    ext		  Tests for extensions.
    performance	  Tests for performance analysis, and performance regressions.
    thread		  Tests for threads.

Some directories don't have test files, but instead contain auxiliary information (more information):

    config		  Files for the dejagnu test harness.
    lib		  Files for the dejagnu test harness.
    libstdc++*     	  Files for the dejagnu test harness.
    data		  Sample text files for testing input and output.

Within a directory that includes test files, there may be additional subdirectories, or files: this particular point is in flux. Originally, test cases were appended to one file that represented a particular section of the chapter under test, and was named accordingly. For instance, to test items related to `21.3.6.1 - basic_string::find [lib.string::find]` in the standard, the following was used:

    21_strings/find.cc

However, that practice soon became a liability as the test cases became huge and unwieldy, and testing new or extended functionality (like wide characters or named locales) became frustrating, leading to aggressive pruning of test cases on some platforms that covered up implementation errors. Now, the test suite is converging on a policy of one file, one test case, which solves the above issues and gives finer grained results and more manageable error debugging. As an example, the test case quoted above becomes:

    21_strings/basic_string/find/char/1.cc
    21_strings/basic_string/find/char/2.cc
    21_strings/basic_string/find/char/3.cc
    21_strings/basic_string/find/wchar_t/1.cc
    21_strings/basic_string/find/wchar_t/2.cc
    21_strings/basic_string/find/wchar_t/3.cc

All new tests should be written with the policy of one test case, one file in mind. At some point the entire testsuite will be converted: the current status is that the 21_string, 22_locale, 23_containers, 27_io, and demangle directories have all been transitioned.

In addition, there are some special names and suffixes that are used within the testsuite to designate particular kinds of tests.

- _xin.cc

  This test case expects some kind of interactive input in order to finish or pass. At the moment, the interactive tests are not run by default. Instead, they are run by hand, like:

      g++ 27_io/objects/char/3_xin.cc
      cat 27_io/objects/char/3_xin.in | a.out

- .in

  This file contains the expected input for the corresponding _xin.cc test case.

- _neg.cc

  This test case is expected to fail: it's a negative test. At the moment, these are almost always compile time errors.

- char

  This can either be a directory name or part of a longer file name, and indicates that this file, or the files within this directory are testing the `char` instantiation of a template.

- wchar_t

  This can either be a directory name or part of a longer file name, and indicates that this file, or the files within this directory are testing the `wchar_t` instantiation of a template. Some hosts do not support `wchar_t` functionality, so for these targets, all of these tests will not be run.

- performance

  This can either be an enclosing directory name or part of a specific file name. This indicates a test that is used to analyze runtime performance, for performance regression testing, or for other optimization related analysis. At the moment, these test cases are not run by default.

## Utilities: abicheck and libv3test

The testsuite directory also contains some files that implement functionality that is intended to make writing test cases easier, or to avoid duplication, or to provide error checking in a way that is consistent across platforms and test harnesses. A stand-alone executable, called abi_check, and a static library called libv3test are constructed during the build. Both of these items are not installed, and only used during testing.

These files include the following functionality:

- abi_check.cc

  Creates the executable abi_check. Used to check correctness of symbol versioning, visibility of exported symbols, and compatibility on symbols in the shared library, for hosts that support this feature. More information can be found in the ABI documentation here

- testsuite_allocator.h and testsuite_allocator.cc

  Specialized allocators that keep track of construction and destruction

- testsuite_hooks.h and testsuite_hooks.cc

  A large number of utilities, including:

  - VERIFY
  - set_memory_limits
  - verify_demangle
  - run_tests_wrapped_locale
  - run_tests_wrapped_env
  - try_named_locale
  - counter
  - copy_constructor
  - assignment_operator
  - destructor
  - copy_tracker
  - pod_char, pod_int and associated char_traits specializations

- testsuite_performance.h

  A number of class abstractions for performance counters, and reporting functions including:

  - time_counter
  - resource_counter
  - report_performance

- printnow.c

  A cross-platform timer for use in one of the older harnesses to determine compilation and link time.

## How to write a new test case

The first step in making a new test case is to choose the correct directory and file name, given the organization as previously described.

All files are copyright the FSF, and GPL'd: this is very important. The first copyright year should correspond to the date the file was checked in to CVS.

As per the dejagnu instructions, always return 0 from main to indicate success.

A bunch of utility functions and classes have already been abstracted out into the testsuite utility library, `libv3test`. To use this functionality, just include the appropriate header file: the library will automatically be linked in as part of the testsuite run.

For a test that needs to take advantage of the dejagnu test harness, what follows below is a list of special keyword that harness uses. Basically, a test case contains dg-keywords (see dg.exp) indicating what to do and what kinds of behavior are to be expected. New test cases should be written with the new style DejaGnu framework in mind.

To ease transition, here is the list of dg-keyword documentation lifted from dg.exp.

    # The currently supported options are:
    #
    # dg-prms-id N
    #	set prms_id to N
    #
    # dg-options "options ..." [{ target selector }]
    #	specify special options to pass to the tool (eg: compiler)
    #
    # dg-do do-what-keyword [{ target/xfail selector }]
    #	`do-what-keyword' is tool specific and is passed unchanged to
    #	${tool}-dg-test.  An example is gcc where `keyword' can be any of:
    #	preprocess|compile|assemble|link|run
    #	and will do one of: produce a .i, produce a .s, produce a .o,
    #	produce an a.out, or produce an a.out and run it (the default is
    #	compile).
    #
    # dg-error regexp comment [{ target/xfail selector } [{.|0|linenum}]]
    #	indicate an error message <regexp> is expected on this line
    #	(the test fails if it doesn't occur)
    #	Linenum=0 for general tool messages (eg: -V arg missing).
    #	"." means the current line.
    #
    # dg-warning regexp comment [{ target/xfail selector } [{.|0|linenum}]]
    #	indicate a warning message <regexp> is expected on this line
    #	(the test fails if it doesn't occur)
    #
    # dg-bogus regexp comment [{ target/xfail selector } [{.|0|linenum}]]
    #	indicate a bogus error message <regexp> use to occur here
    #	(the test fails if it does occur)
    #
    # dg-build regexp comment [{ target/xfail selector }]
    #	indicate the build use to fail for some reason
    #	(errors covered here include bad assembler generated, tool crashes,
    #	and link failures)
    #	(the test fails if it does occur)
    #
    # dg-excess-errors comment [{ target/xfail selector }]
    #	indicate excess errors are expected (any line)
    #	(this should only be used sparingly and temporarily)
    #
    # dg-output regexp [{ target selector }]
    #	indicate the expected output of the program is <regexp>
    #	(there may be multiple occurrences of this, they are concatenated)
    #
    # dg-final { tcl code }
    #	add some tcl code to be run at the end
    #	(there may be multiple occurrences of this, they are concatenated)
    #	(unbalanced braces must be \-escaped)
    #
    # "{ target selector }" is a list of expressions that determine whether the
    # test succeeds or fails for a particular target, or in some cases whether the
    # option applies for a particular target.  If the case of `dg-do' it specifies
    # whether the test case is even attempted on the specified target.
    #
    # The target selector is always optional.  The format is one of:
    #
    # { xfail *-*-* ... } - the test is expected to fail for the given targets
    # { target *-*-* ... } - the option only applies to the given targets
    #
    # At least one target must be specified, use *-*-* for "all targets".
    # At present it is not possible to specify both `xfail' and `target'.
    # "native" may be used in place of "*-*-*".

    Example 1: Testing compilation only
    // { dg-do compile }

    Example 2: Testing for expected warnings on line 36, which all targets fail
    // { dg-warning "string literals" "" { xfail *-*-* } 36

    Example 3: Testing for expected warnings on line 36
    // { dg-warning "string literals" "" { target *-*-* } 36

    Example 4: Testing for compilation errors on line 41
    // { dg-do compile }
    // { dg-error "no match for" "" { target *-*-* } 41 }

    Example 5: Testing with special command line settings, or without the
    use of pre-compiled headers, in particular the stdc++.h.gch file. Any
    options here will override the DEFAULT_CXXFLAGS set up in the
    normal.exp file.
    // { dg-options "-O0" { target *-*-* } }

More examples can be found in the libstdc++-v3/testsuite/*/*.cc files.

## Options for running the tests

There are several ways to run the testsuite. There are two harnesses, one using dejagnu and one using bash. In addition, there is a special rule for checking the ABI of the shared library.

You can check the status of the build without installing it using the dejagnu harness, much like the rest of the gcc tools.

     make check

in the libbuilddir directory.

or

     make check-target-libstdc++-v3

in the gccbuilddir directory.

These commands are equivalent and will create a 'testsuite' directory underneath libbuilddir containing the results of the tests. Two results files will be generated: libstdc++-v3.sum, which is a PASS/FAIL summary for each test, and libstdc++.log which is a log of the exact command line passed to the compiler, the compiler output, and the executable output (if any). In addition, four files are generated that determine what test files are run. These files are:

- testsuite_files

  This is a list of all the test cases that will be run. Each test case is on a separate line, given with an absolute path from the libsrcdir/testsuite directory.

- testsuite_files_interactive

  This is a list of all the interactive test cases, using the same format as the file list above. These tests are not run by default.

- testsuite_files_performance

  This is a list of all the performance test cases, using the same format as the file list above. These tests are not run by default.

- testsuite_wchar_t

  This file indicates that the host system can run the wchar_t tests, and corresponds to the macro definition `_GLIBCXX_USE_WCHAR_T` in the file c++config.h.

To debug the dejagnu test harness during runs, try invoking with a specific argument to the variable RUNTESTFLAGS, as below.

    make check-target-libstdc++-v3 RUNTESTFLAGS="-v"

or

    make check-target-libstdc++-v3 RUNTESTFLAGS="-v -v"

There are two ways to run on a simulator: set up DEJAGNU to point to a specially crafted site.exp, or pass down --target_board flags. Example flags to pass down for various embedded builds are as follows:

    --target=powerpc-eabism (libgloss/sim)
    make check-target-libstdc++-v3 RUNTESTFLAGS="--target_board=powerpc-sim"

    --target=calmrisc32 (libgloss/sid)
    make check-target-libstdc++-v3 RUNTESTFLAGS="--target_board=calmrisc32-sid"

    --target=xscale-elf (newlib/sim)
    make check-target-libstdc++-v3 RUNTESTFLAGS="--target_board=arm-sim"

Also, here is an example of how to run the libstdc++ testsuite for a multilibed build directory with different ABI settings:

    make check-target-libstdc++-v3 RUNTESTFLAGS='--target_board \"unix{-mabi=32,,-mabi=64}\"'

To run a subset of the library tests, simply edit the generated file, testsuite_files , to include only the files that are desired instead of all available test cases.

In addition, there are some testing options that are mostly of interest to library maintainers and system integrators. As such, these tests may not work on all cpu and host combinations, and must be executed in the libbuilddir/testsuite directory. These options include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:

The library can also be tested using a bash script, instead of the default dejagnu test harness.

       make check-script

These commands use the generated test_file lists as above, but run all the tests using both shared and static linking, and in addition provide some additional diffing of expected output files for the input/output tests. (This added diff may or may not be useful or necessary at the moment.) In addition, these tests provide size information for all the generated test cases, so that size data for new compiler or linker features can be collected. At one time timing information was attempted, so that compile speeds, link speeds, etc. could be measured, however at the moment all timing information is currently disabled.

       make check-script-install

As directly above, but tests an installed library, not the library and compiler in the build tree.

       make check-abi

The library ABI can be tested. This involves testing the shared library against an ABI-defining previous version.

       make check-performance

This rule runs through the testsuite_files_performance test cases and collects information for performance analysis and can be used to spot performance regressions. Various timing information is collected, as well as number of hard page faults, and memory used. This is not run by default, and the implementation is in flux.

We are interested in any strange failures of the testsuite; please see FAQ 2.4 for which files to examine.

## Running debug-mode tests

To run the libstdc++ test suite under the debug mode, edit `libstdc++/scripts/testsuite_flags` to add the compile-time flag `-D_GLIBCXX_DEBUG` to the result printed by the `--build-cxx` option. Additionally, add the `-D_GLIBCXX_DEBUG_PEDANTIC` flag to turn on pedantic checking. The libstdc++ test suite should produce precisely the same results under debug mode that it does under release mode: any deviation indicates an error in either the library or the test suite.

## Future

Shared runs need to be implemented, for targets that support shared libraries.

Diffing of expected output to standard streams needs to be finished off.

The V3 testing framework supports, or will eventually support, additional keywords for the purpose of easing the job of writing test cases. All V3-keywords are of the form `@xxx@`. Currently plans for supported keywords include:

`@require@ <files>`

  The existence of <files> is essential for the test to complete successfully. For example, a test case foo.C using bar.baz as input file could say

      	    // @require@ bar.baz

  The special variable % stands for the rootname, e.g. the file-name without its `.C' extension. Example of use (taken verbatim from 27_io/filebuf.cc)

      	   // @require@ %-*.tst %-*.txt

`@diff@ <first-list> <second-list>`

  After the test case compiles and ran successfully, diff <first-list> against <second-list>, these lists should have the same length. The test fails if diff returns non-zero a pair of files.

## DejaGNU internals

This is information for those looking at making changes to the testsuite structure, and/or needing to trace dejagnu's actions with --verbose. This will not be useful to people who are "merely" adding new tests to the existing structure.

The first key point when working with dejagnu is the idea of a "tool". Files, directories, and functions are all implicitly used when they are named after the tool in use. Here, the tool will always be "libstdc++".

The `lib` subdir contains support routines. The `lib/libstdc++.exp` file ("support library") is loaded automagically, and must explicitly load the others. For example, files can be copied from the core compiler's support directory into `lib`.

Some routines in `lib/libstdc++.exp` are callbacks, some are our own. Callbacks must be prefixed with the name of the tool. To easily distinguish the others, by convention our own routines are named "v3-*".

The next key point when working with dejagnu is "test files". Any directory whose name starts with the tool name will be searched for test files. (We have only one.) In those directories, any `.exp` file is considered a test file, and will be run in turn. Our main test file is called `normal.exp`; it runs all the tests in testsuite_files using the callbacks loaded from the support library.

The `config` directory is searched for any particular "target board" information unique to this library. This is currently unused and sets only default variables.

See license.html for copying conditions. Comments and suggestions are welcome, and may be sent to the libstdc++ mailing list.