README.md
1<!--
2Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al.
3
4SPDX-License-Identifier: curl
5-->
6
7# The curl Test Suite
8
9# Running
10
11 See the "Requires to run" section for prerequisites.
12
13 In the root of the curl repository:
14
15 ./configure && make && make test
16
17 To run a specific set of tests (e.g. 303 and 410):
18
19 make test TFLAGS="303 410"
20
21 To run the tests faster, pass the -j (parallelism) flag:
22
23 make test TFLAGS="-j10"
24
25 "make test" builds the test suite support code and invokes the 'runtests.pl'
26 perl script to run all the tests. The value of `TFLAGS` is passed
27 directly to 'runtests.pl'.
28
29 When you run tests via make, the flags `-a` and `-s` are passed, meaning
30 to continue running tests even after one fails, and to emit short output.
31
32 If you'd like to not use those flags, you can run 'runtests.pl' directly.
33 You must `chdir` into the tests directory, then you can run it like so:
34
35 ./runtests.pl 303 410
36
37 You must have run `make test` at least once first to build the support code.
38
39 To see what flags are available for runtests.pl, and what output it emits, run:
40
41 man ./tests/runtests.1
42
43 After a test fails, examine the tests/log directory for stdout, stderr, and
44 output from the servers used in the test.
45
46## Requires to run
47
48 - perl (and a unix-style shell)
49 - python (and a unix-style shell, for SMB and TELNET tests)
50 - python-impacket (for SMB tests)
51 - diff (when a test fails, a diff is shown)
52 - stunnel (for HTTPS and FTPS tests)
53 - OpenSSH or SunSSH (for SCP and SFTP tests)
54 - nghttpx (for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 tests)
55 - An available `en_US.UTF-8` locale
56
57### Installation of python-impacket
58
59 The Python-based test servers support both recent Python 2 and 3.
60 You can figure out your default Python interpreter with python -V
61
62 Please install python-impacket in the correct Python environment.
63 You can use pip or your OS' package manager to install 'impacket'.
64
65 On Debian/Ubuntu the package names are:
66
67 - Python 2: 'python-impacket'
68 - Python 3: 'python3-impacket'
69
70 On FreeBSD the package names are:
71
72 - Python 2: 'py27-impacket'
73 - Python 3: 'py37-impacket'
74
75 On any system where pip is available:
76
77 - Python 2: 'pip2 install impacket'
78 - Python 3: 'pip3 install impacket'
79
80 You may also need to manually install the Python package 'six'
81 as that may be a missing requirement for impacket on Python 3.
82
83### Port numbers used by test servers
84
85 All test servers run on "random" port numbers. All tests should be written
86 to use suitable variables instead of fixed port numbers so that test cases
87 continue to work independent on what port numbers the test servers actually
88 use.
89
90 See [`FILEFORMAT`](FILEFORMAT.md) for the port number variables.
91
92### Test servers
93
94 The test suite runs stand-alone servers on random ports to which it makes
95 requests. For SSL tests, it runs stunnel to handle encryption to the regular
96 servers. For SSH, it runs a standard OpenSSH server.
97
98 The listen port numbers for the test servers are picked randomly to allow
99 users to run multiple test cases concurrently and to not collide with other
100 existing services that might listen to ports on the machine.
101
102 The HTTP server supports listening on a Unix domain socket, the default
103 location is 'http.sock'.
104
105 For HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 testing an installed `nghttpx` is used. HTTP/3
106 tests check if nghttpx supports the protocol. To override the nghttpx
107 used, set the environment variable `NGHTTPX`. The default can also be
108 changed by specifying `--with-test-nghttpx=<path>` as argument to `configure`.
109
110### Shell startup scripts
111
112 Tests which use the ssh test server, SCP/SFTP tests, might be badly
113 influenced by the output of system wide or user specific shell startup
114 scripts, .bashrc, .profile, /etc/csh.cshrc, .login, /etc/bashrc, etc. which
115 output text messages or escape sequences on user login. When these shell
116 startup messages or escape sequences are output they might corrupt the
117 expected stream of data which flows to the sftp-server or from the ssh
118 client which can result in bad test behavior or even prevent the test server
119 from running.
120
121 If the test suite ssh or sftp server fails to start up and logs the message
122 'Received message too long' then you are certainly suffering the unwanted
123 output of a shell startup script. Locate, cleanup or adjust the shell
124 script.
125
126### Memory test
127
128 The test script will check that all allocated memory is freed properly IF
129 curl has been built with the `CURLDEBUG` define set. The script will
130 automatically detect if that is the case, and it will use the
131 `memanalyze.pl` script to analyze the memory debugging output.
132
133 Also, if you run tests on a machine where valgrind is found, the script will
134 use valgrind to run the test with (unless you use `-n`) to further verify
135 correctness.
136
137 The `runtests.pl` `-t` option enables torture testing mode. It runs each
138 test many times and makes each different memory allocation fail on each
139 successive run. This tests the out of memory error handling code to ensure
140 that memory leaks do not occur even in those situations. It can help to
141 compile curl with `CPPFLAGS=-DMEMDEBUG_LOG_SYNC` when using this option, to
142 ensure that the memory log file is properly written even if curl crashes.
143
144### Debug
145
146 If a test case fails, you can conveniently get the script to invoke the
147 debugger (gdb) for you with the server running and the same command line
148 parameters that failed. Just invoke `runtests.pl <test number> -g` and then
149 just type 'run' in the debugger to perform the command through the debugger.
150
151### Logs
152
153 All logs are generated in the log/ subdirectory (it is emptied first in the
154 runtests.pl script). They remain in there after a test run.
155
156### Log Verbosity
157
158 A curl build with `--enable-debug` offers more verbose output in the logs.
159 This applies not only for test cases, but also when running it standalone
160 with `curl -v`. While a curl debug built is
161 ***not suitable for production***, it is often helpful in tracking down
162 problems.
163
164 Sometimes, one needs detailed logging of operations, but does not want
165 to drown in output. The newly introduced *connection filters* allows one to
166 dynamically increase log verbosity for a particular *filter type*. Example:
167
168 CURL_DEBUG=ssl curl -v https://curl.se
169
170 will make the `ssl` connection filter log more details. One may do that for
171 every filter type and also use a combination of names, separated by `,` or
172 space.
173
174 CURL_DEBUG=ssl,http/2 curl -v https://curl.se
175
176 The order of filter type names is not relevant. Names used here are
177 case insensitive. Note that these names are implementation internals and
178 subject to change.
179
180 Some, likely stable names are `tcp`, `ssl`, `http/2`. For a current list,
181 one may search the sources for `struct Curl_cftype` definitions and find
182 the names there. Also, some filters are only available with certain build
183 options, of course.
184
185### Test input files
186
187 All test cases are put in the `data/` subdirectory. Each test is stored in
188 the file named according to the test number.
189
190 See [`FILEFORMAT`](FILEFORMAT.md) for a description of the test case file
191 format.
192
193### Code coverage
194
195 gcc provides a tool that can determine the code coverage figures for the
196 test suite. To use it, configure curl with `CFLAGS='-fprofile-arcs
197 -ftest-coverage -g -O0'`. Make sure you run the normal and torture tests to
198 get more full coverage, i.e. do:
199
200 make test
201 make test-torture
202
203 The graphical tool `ggcov` can be used to browse the source and create
204 coverage reports on \*nix hosts:
205
206 ggcov -r lib src
207
208 The text mode tool `gcov` may also be used, but it doesn't handle object
209 files in more than one directory correctly.
210
211### Remote testing
212
213 The runtests.pl script provides some hooks to allow curl to be tested on a
214 machine where perl can not be run. The test framework in this case runs on
215 a workstation where perl is available, while curl itself is run on a remote
216 system using ssh or some other remote execution method. See the comments at
217 the beginning of runtests.pl for details.
218
219## Test case numbering
220
221 Test cases used to be numbered by category ranges, but the ranges filled
222 up. Subsets of tests can now be selected by passing keywords to the
223 runtests.pl script via the make `TFLAGS` variable.
224
225 New tests are added by finding a free number in `tests/data/Makefile.inc`.
226
227## Write tests
228
229 Here's a quick description on writing test cases. We basically have three
230 kinds of tests: the ones that test the curl tool, the ones that build small
231 applications and test libcurl directly and the unit tests that test
232 individual (possibly internal) functions.
233
234### test data
235
236 Each test has a master file that controls all the test data. What to read,
237 what the protocol exchange should look like, what exit code to expect and
238 what command line arguments to use etc.
239
240 These files are `tests/data/test[num]` where `[num]` is just a unique
241 identifier described above, and the XML-like file format of them is
242 described in the separate [`FILEFORMAT`](FILEFORMAT.md) document.
243
244### curl tests
245
246 A test case that runs the curl tool and verifies that it gets the correct
247 data, it sends the correct data, it uses the correct protocol primitives
248 etc.
249
250### libcurl tests
251
252 The libcurl tests are identical to the curl ones, except that they use a
253 specific and dedicated custom-built program to run instead of "curl". This
254 tool is built from source code placed in `tests/libtest` and if you want to
255 make a new libcurl test that is where you add your code.
256
257### unit tests
258
259 Unit tests are placed in `tests/unit`. There's a tests/unit/README
260 describing the specific set of checks and macros that may be used when
261 writing tests that verify behaviors of specific individual functions.
262
263 The unit tests depend on curl being built with debug enabled.
264
