| The test suite was originally written by Steve McGee and Chris Arthur. |
| It is covered by the GNU General Public License (Version 2), described |
| in the file COPYING. It has been maintained as part of GNU make proper |
| since GNU make 3.78. |
| |
| This entire test suite, including all test files, are copyright and |
| distributed under the following terms: |
| |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Copyright (C) 1992-2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc. |
| This file is part of GNU Make. |
| |
| GNU Make is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the |
| terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software |
| Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later |
| version. |
| |
| GNU Make is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY |
| WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR |
| A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. |
| |
| You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with |
| this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| The test suite requires Perl. These days, you should have at least Perl 5.6. |
| Newer versions may be required: I don't test regularly with older versions |
| than what is installed by default on my development systems. |
| |
| The test suite assumes that the first "diff" it finds on your PATH is |
| GNU diff, but that only matters if a test fails. |
| |
| To run the test suite on a UNIX system, use "perl ./run_make_tests" |
| (or just "./run_make_tests" if you have a perl on your PATH). |
| |
| To run the test suite on Windows NT or DOS systems, use |
| "perl.exe ./run_make-tests.pl". |
| |
| By default, the test engine picks up the first executable called "make" that |
| it finds in your path. You may use the -make option (i.e., |
| "perl run_make_tests -make /usr/local/src/make-latest/make") if you want to |
| run a particular copy. This now works correctly with relative paths and |
| when make is called something other than "make" (like "gmake"). |
| |
| Tests cannot end with a "~" character, as the test suite will ignore any |
| that do (I was tired of having it run my Emacs backup files as tests :)) |
| |
| Also, sometimes the tests may behave strangely on networked |
| filesystems. You can use mkshadow to create a copy of the test suite in |
| /tmp or similar, and try again. If the error disappears, it's an issue |
| with your network or file server, not GNU make (I believe). This |
| shouldn't happen very often anymore: I've done a lot of work on the |
| tests to reduce the impacts of this situation. |
| |
| A directory named "work" will be created when the tests are run which |
| will contain any makefiles and "diff" files of tests that fail so that |
| you may look at them afterward to see the output of make and the |
| expected result. |
| |
| There is a -help option which will give you more information about the |
| other possible options for the test suite. |
| |
| |
| Open Issues |
| ----------- |
| |
| The test suite has a number of problems which should be addressed. One VERY |
| serious one is that there is no real documentation. You just have to see the |
| existing tests. Use the newer tests: many of the tests haven't been updated |
| to use the latest/greatest test methods. See the ChangeLogs for pointers. |
| |
| The second serious problem is that it's not relocatable: when you build out of |
| the source tree it creates symlinks, which doesn't work on every system and is |
| just bogus to boot. |
| |
| The third serious problem is that it's not parallelizable: it scribbles all |
| over its installation directory and so can only test one make at a time. |
| |
| The fourth serious problem is that since the tests scribble all over the same |
| directory (a) they can interfere with each other and (b) we cannot preserve |
| the full environment for every test, if it involves creating temporary files |
| etc. as they must be deleted before the next test. |
| |
| To solve these the suite should create a separate directory for EVERY test, |
| local to the build directory, and all temporary files should exist in that |
| directory. The directory can be preserved on error, or removed if the test |
| succeeds (unless --keep is given). |
| |
| |
| Bugs |
| ---- |
| |
| Any complaints/suggestions/bugs/etc. for the test suite itself should be |
| handled the same way as normal GNU make bugs/problems (see the README for GNU |
| make). |
| |
| |
| Paul D. Smith |
| Chris Arthur |