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subunit: A streaming protocol for test results
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Copyright (C) 2005-2009 Robert Collins <robertc@robertcollins.net>
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Licensed under either the Apache License, Version 2.0 or the BSD 3-clause
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license at the users choice. A copy of both licenses are available in the
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project source as Apache-2.0 and BSD. You may not use this file except in
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compliance with one of these two licences.
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Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
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distributed under these licenses is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT
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WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
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license you chose for the specific language governing permissions and
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limitations under that license.
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See the COPYING file for full details on the licensing of Subunit.
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subunit reuses iso8601 by Michael Twomey, distributed under an MIT style
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licence - see python/iso8601/LICENSE for details.
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Subunit is a streaming protocol for test results. The protocol is human
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readable and easily generated and parsed. By design all the components of
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the protocol conceptually fit into the xUnit TestCase->TestResult interaction.
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Subunit comes with command line filters to process a subunit stream and
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language bindings for python, C, C++ and shell. Bindings are easy to write
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A number of useful things can be done easily with subunit:
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* Test aggregation: Tests run separately can be combined and then
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reported/displayed together. For instance, tests from different languages
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can be shown as a seamless whole.
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* Test archiving: A test run may be recorded and replayed later.
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* Test isolation: Tests that may crash or otherwise interact badly with each
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other can be run seperately and then aggregated, rather than interfering
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* Grid testing: subunit can act as the necessary serialisation and
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deserialiation to get test runs on distributed machines to be reported in
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Subunit supplies the following filters:
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* tap2subunit - convert perl's TestAnythingProtocol to subunit.
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* subunit2pyunit - convert a subunit stream to pyunit test results.
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* subunit2gtk - show a subunit stream in GTK.
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* subunit2junitxml - convert a subunit stream to JUnit's XML format.
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* subunit-diff - compare two subunit streams.
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* subunit-filter - filter out tests from a subunit stream.
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* subunit-ls - list info about tests present in a subunit stream.
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* subunit-stats - generate a summary of a subunit stream.
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* subunit-tags - add or remove tags from a stream.
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Integration with other tools
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----------------------------
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Subunit's language bindings act as integration with various test runners like
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'check', 'cppunit', Python's 'unittest'. Beyond that a small amount of glue
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(typically a few lines) will allow Subunit to be used in more sophisticated
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Subunit has excellent Python support: most of the filters and tools are written
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in python and there are facilities for using Subunit to increase test isolation
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seamlessly within a test suite.
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One simple way to run an existing python test suite and have it output subunit
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is the module ``subunit.run``::
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$ python -m subunit.run mypackage.tests.test_suite
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For more information on the Python support Subunit offers , please see
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``pydoc subunit``, or the source in ``python/subunit/__init__.py``
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Subunit has C bindings to emit the protocol, and comes with a patch for 'check'
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which has been nominally accepted by the 'check' developers. See 'c/README' for
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The C library is includable and usable directly from C++. A TestListener for
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CPPUnit is included in the Subunit distribution. See 'c++/README' for details.
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Similar to C, the shell bindings consist of simple functions to output protocol
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elements, and a patch for adding subunit output to the 'ShUnit' shell test
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runner. See 'shell/README' for details.
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To ignore some failing tests whose root cause is already known::
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subunit-filter --without 'AttributeError.*flavor'
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Sample subunit wire contents
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----------------------------
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success: test foo works.
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failure: tar a file. [
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foo.c:34 WARNING foo is not defined.
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When run through subunit2pyunit::
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========================
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foo.c:34 WARNING foo is not defined.
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Subunit protocol description
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============================
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This description is being ported to an EBNF style. Currently its only partly in
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that style, but should be fairly clear all the same. When in doubt, refer the
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source (and ideally help fix up the description!). Generally the protocol is
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line orientated and consists of either directives and their parameters, or
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when outside a DETAILS region unexpected lines which are not interpreted by
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the parser - they should be forwarded unaltered.
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test|testing|test:|testing: test label
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success|success:|successful|successful: test label
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success|success:|successful|successful: test label DETAILS
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failure: test label DETAILS
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error: test label DETAILS
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skip[:] test label DETAILS
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xfail[:] test label DETAILS
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time: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SSZ
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DETAILS ::= BRACKETED | MULTIPART
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BRACKETED ::= '[' CR UTF8-lines ']' CR
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MULTIPART ::= '[ multipart' CR PART* ']' CR
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PART ::= PART_TYPE CR NAME CR PART_BYTES CR
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PART_TYPE ::= Content-Type: type/sub-type(;parameter=value,parameter=value)
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PART_BYTES ::= (DIGITS CR LF BYTE{DIGITS})* '0' CR LF
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unexpected output on stdout -> stdout.
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exit w/0 or last test completing -> error
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Tags given outside a test are applied to all following tests
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Tags given after a test: line and before the result line for the same test
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apply only to that test, and inherit the current global tags.
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A '-' before a tag is used to remove tags - e.g. to prevent a global tag
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applying to a single test, or to cancel a global tag.
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The progress directive is used to provide progress information about a stream
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so that stream consumer can provide completion estimates, progress bars and so
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on. Stream generators that know how many tests will be present in the stream
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should output "progress: COUNT". Stream filters that add tests should output
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"progress: +COUNT", and those that remove tests should output
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"progress: -COUNT". An absolute count should reset the progress indicators in
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use - it indicates that two separate streams from different generators have
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been trivially concatenated together, and there is no knowledge of how many
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more complete streams are incoming. Smart concatenation could scan each stream
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for their count and sum them, or alternatively translate absolute counts into
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relative counts inline. It is recommended that outputters avoid absolute counts
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unless necessary. The push and pop directives are used to provide local regions
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for progress reporting. This fits with hierarchically operating test
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environments - such as those that organise tests into suites - the top-most
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runner can report on the number of suites, and each suite surround its output
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with a (push, pop) pair. Interpreters should interpret a pop as also advancing
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the progress of the restored level by one step. Encountering progress
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directives between the start and end of a test pair indicates that a previous
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test was interrupted and did not cleanly terminate: it should be implicitly
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closed with an error (the same as when a stream ends with no closing test
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directive for the most recently started test).
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The time directive acts as a clock event - it sets the time for all future
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events. The value should be a valid ISO8601 time.
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The skip result is used to indicate a test that was found by the runner but not
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fully executed due to some policy or dependency issue. This is represented in
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python using the addSkip interface that testtools
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(https://edge.launchpad.net/testtools) defines. When communicating with a non
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skip aware test result, the test is reported as an error.
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The xfail result is used to indicate a test that was expected to fail failing
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in the expected manner. As this is a normal condition for such tests it is
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represented as a successful test in Python.
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In future, skip and xfail results will be represented semantically in Python,
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but some discussion is underway on the right way to do this.