Unit tests will be automatically compiled if dependencies were met in ./configure
and tests weren't explicitly disabled.
After configuring, they can be run with make check.
To run the pivxd tests manually, launch src/test/test_pivx. To recompile
after a test file was modified, run make and then run the test again. If you
modify a non-test file, use make -C src/test to recompile only what's needed
to run the pivxd tests.
To add more pivxd tests, add BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE functions to the existing
.cpp files in the test/ directory or add new .cpp files that
implement new BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_SUITE sections.
To run the pivx-qt tests manually, launch src/qt/test/test_pivx-qt
To add more pivx-qt tests, add them to the src/qt/test/ directory and
the src/qt/test/test_main.cpp file.
test_pivx has some built-in command-line arguments; for example, to run just the getarg_tests verbosely:
test_pivx --log_level=all --run_test=getarg_tests
... or to run just the doubledash test:
test_pivx --run_test=getarg_tests/doubledash
Run test_pivx --help for the full list.
The sources in this directory are unit test cases. Boost includes a unit testing framework, and since pivx already uses boost, it makes sense to simply use this framework rather than require developers to configure some other framework (we want as few impediments to creating unit tests as possible).
The build system is setup to compile an executable called test_pivx
that runs all of the unit tests. The main source file is called
test_pivx.cpp, which simply includes other files that contain the
actual unit tests (outside of a couple required preprocessor
directives). To add a new unit test file to our test suite you need
to add the file to src/Makefile.test.include. The pattern is to
create one test file for each class or source file for which you want
to create unit tests. The file naming convention is
<source_filename>_tests.cpp and such files should wrap their tests
in a test suite called <source_filename>_tests. For an example of
this pattern, examine uint160_tests.cpp and uint256_tests.cpp.
For further reading, I found the following website to be helpful in explaining how the boost unit test framework works: http://www.alittlemadness.com/2009/03/31/c-unit-testing-with-boosttest/.