1 The test suite was originally written by Steve McGee and Chris Arthur. 2 It is covered by the GNU General Public License (Version 2), described 3 in the file COPYING. It has been maintained as part of GNU make proper 4 since GNU make 3.78. 5 6 This entire test suite, including all test files, are copyright and 7 distributed under the following terms: 8 9 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 11 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 12 This file is part of GNU Make. 13 14 GNU Make is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the 15 terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 16 Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version. 17 18 GNU Make is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY 19 WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR 20 A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. 21 22 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with 23 GNU Make; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software 24 Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA. 25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 27 The test suite requires Perl. These days, you should have at least Perl 28 5.004 (available from ftp.gnu.org, and portable to many machines). It 29 used to work with Perl 4.036 but official support for Perl 4.x was 30 abandoned a long time ago, due to lack of testbeds, as well as interest. 31 32 The test suite assumes that the first "diff" it finds on your PATH is 33 GNU diff, but that only matters if a test fails. 34 35 To run the test suite on a UNIX system, use "perl ./run_make_tests" 36 (or just "./run_make_tests" if you have a perl on your PATH). 37 38 To run the test suite on Windows NT or DOS systems, use 39 "perl.exe ./run_make-tests.pl". 40 41 By default, the test engine picks up the first executable called "make" 42 that it finds in your path. You may use the -make_path option (ie, 43 "perl run_make_tests -make_path /usr/local/src/make-3.78/make") if 44 you want to run a particular copy. This now works correctly with 45 relative paths and when make is called something other than "make" (like 46 "gmake"). 47 48 Tests cannot end with a "~" character, as the test suite will ignore any 49 that do (I was tired of having it run my Emacs backup files as tests :)) 50 51 Also, sometimes the tests may behave strangely on networked 52 filesystems. You can use mkshadow to create a copy of the test suite in 53 /tmp or similar, and try again. If the error disappears, it's an issue 54 with your network or file server, not GNU make (I believe). This 55 shouldn't happen very often anymore: I've done a lot of work on the 56 tests to reduce the impacts of this situation. 57 58 The options/dash-l test will not really test anything if the copy of 59 make you are using can't obtain the system load. Some systems require 60 make to be setgid sys or kmem for this; if you don't want to install 61 make just to test it, make it setgid to kmem or whatever group /dev/kmem 62 is (ie, "chgrp kmem make;chmod g+s make" as root). In any case, the 63 options/dash-l test should no longer *fail* because make can't read 64 /dev/kmem. 65 66 A directory named "work" will be created when the tests are run which 67 will contain any makefiles and "diff" files of tests that fail so that 68 you may look at them afterward to see the output of make and the 69 expected result. 70 71 There is a -help option which will give you more information about the 72 other possible options for the test suite. 73 74 75 Open Issues 76 ----------- 77 78 The test suite has a number of problems which should be addressed. One 79 VERY serious one is that there is no real documentation. You just have 80 to see the existing tests. Use the newer tests: many of the tests 81 haven't been updated to use the latest/greatest test methods. See the 82 ChangeLog in the tests directory for pointers. 83 84 The second serious problem is that it's not parallelizable: it scribbles 85 all over its installation directory and so can only test one make at a 86 time. The third serious problem is that it's not relocatable: the only 87 way it works when you build out of the source tree is to create 88 symlinks, which doesn't work on every system and is bogus to boot. The 89 fourth serious problem is that it doesn't create its own sandbox when 90 running tests, so that if a test forgets to clean up after itself that 91 can impact future tests. 92 93 94 Bugs 95 ---- 96 97 Any complaints/suggestions/bugs/etc. for the test suite itself (as 98 opposed to problems in make that the suite finds) should be handled the 99 same way as normal GNU make bugs/problems (see the README for GNU make). 100 101 102 Paul D. Smith 103 Chris Arthur 104
