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Common Test
User's Guide
Version 1.5

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Chapters

• Common Test Basics
  • Top of chapter
  • Introduction
  • Test Suite Organisation
  • Support Libraries
  • Suites and Test Cases
  • External Interfaces
• Installation
  • Top of chapter
  • General information
• Writing Test Suites
  • Top of chapter
  • Support for test suite authors
  • Test suites
  • Init and end per suite
  • Init and end per test case
  • Test cases
  • Test case info function
  • Test suite info function
  • Test case groups
  • The parallel property and nested groups
  • Repeated groups
  • Shuffled test case order
  • Data and Private Directories
  • Execution environment
  • Timetrap timeouts
  • Illegal dependencies
• Test Structure
  • Top of chapter
  • Test structure
  • Skipping test cases
  • Definition of terms
• Examples and Templates
  • Top of chapter
  • Test suite example
  • Test suite templates
• Running Test Suites
  • Top of chapter
  • Using the Common Test Framework
  • Automatic compilation of test suites and help modules
  • Running tests from the OS command line
  • Running tests from the Web based GUI
  • Running tests from the Erlang shell or from an Erlang program
  • Running the interactive shell mode
  • Step by step execution of test cases with the Erlang Debugger
  • Using test specifications
  • Log files
  • HTML Style Sheets
  • Repeating tests
  • Silent Connections
• Config Files
  • Top of chapter
  • General
  • Syntax
  • Requiring and reading configuration data
  • Using configuration variables defined in multiple files
  • Encrypted configuration files
  • Opening connections by using configuration data
  • User specific configuration data formats
  • Examples of configuration data handling
  • Example of user specific configuration handler
• Code Coverage Analysis
  • Top of chapter
  • General
  • Usage
  • The cover specification file
  • Logging
• Using Common Test for Large Scale Testing
  • Top of chapter
  • General
  • Usage
  • Test Specifications
  • Automatic startup of test target nodes
• Event Handling
  • Top of chapter
  • General
  • Usage
• Dependencies between Test Cases and Suites
  • Top of chapter
  • General
  • Saving configuration data
  • Sequences
• Some thoughts about testing
  • Top of chapter
  • Goals
  • What to test?

2 Installation

2.1  General information

The two main interfaces for running tests with Common Test are an executable program named run_test and an erlang module named ct. The run_test program is compiled for the underlying operating system (e.g. Unix/Linux or Windows) during the build of the Erlang/OTP system, and is installed automatically with other executable programs in the top level bin directory of Erlang/OTP. The ct interface functions can be called from the Erlang shell, or from any Erlang function, on any supported platform.

A legacy Bourne shell script - also named run_test - exists, which may be manually generated and installed. This script may be used instead of the run_test program mentioned above, e.g. if the user wishes to modify or customize the Common Test start flags in a simpler way than making changes to the run_test C program.

The Common Test application is installed with the Erlang/OTP system and no additional installation step is required to start using Common Test by means of the run_test executable program, and/or the interface functions in the ct module. If you wish to use the legacy Bourne shell script version of run_test, however, this script needs to be generated first, according to the instructions below.

Optional step to generate a shell script for starting Common Test:

To generate the run_test shell script, navigate to the common_test-<vsn> directory, located among the other OTP applications (under the OTP lib directory). Here execute the install.sh script with argument local:

$ ./install.sh local

This generates the executable run_test script in the common_test-<vsn>/priv/bin directory. The script will include absolute paths to the Common Test and Test Server application directories, so it's possible to copy or move the script to a different location on the file system, if desired, without having to update it. It's of course possible to leave the script under the priv/bin directory and update the PATH variable accordingly (or create a link or alias to it).

If you, for any reason, have copied Common Test and Test Server to a different location than the default OTP lib directory, you can generate a run_test script with a different top level directory, simply by specifying the directory, instead of local, when running install.sh. Example:

$ install.sh /usr/local/test_tools

Note that the common_test-<vsn> and test_server-<vsn> directories must be located under the same top directory. Note also that the install script does not copy files or update environment variables. It only generates the run_test script.

Whenever you install a new version of Erlang/OTP, the run_test script needs to be regenerated, or updated manually with new directory names (new version numbers), for it to "see" the latest Common Test and Test Server versions.