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unittest

Quality check status

Unittest is the standard test runner.

It follows the Unix philosophy with a modern touch, so it is:

  • easy to use: readable elm-inspired error messages & colourized output (if applicable)
  • easy to package: POSIX-compliant & MIT license
  • easy to extend: with pipelines & standard Unix tools
  • easy to replace: tests can be run manually (see: Brief theory of shell testing).

Its simplicity makes it useful not only for testing shell scripts but also for black-box testing of commands written in any language.

Usage

With a basic call, it searches inside tests/ directory for test_*.sh files with test_* functions:

$ unittest
tests/test_asserts.sh:test_assertEqual_equal_ints	PASS
tests/test_asserts.sh:test_assertEqual_unequal_ints	PASS
...

The result is reported to stdout. Non-zero exit code indicates, that some tests have failed. To be passed, each test should exit with 0 code.

In addition to test_* functions, you can also define functions named:

  • xtest_* - will be reported as SKIP (without error)
  • beforeEach and afterEach - test preparation/cleanup code executed before/after each test function
  • beforeAll and afterAll - test preparation/cleanup code executed once per file, before/after all test functions.

Tests can call the test function, which extends the test command with a readable error report (to stderr):

$ unittest
...
tests/test_number_assertions.sh:test_lessequal_mixed2	PASS

-- FAILED TEST [tests/test_output.sh:test_status_pass]

I expected:

    test '0' '-eq' '10'

to be true, but the result was false.

tests/test_output.sh:test_status_pass	FAIL
tests/test_output.sh:test_status_fail	PASS
...

For example, tests see files inside the tests directory.

Installation

The instruction is for Linux. On different OSes, you may need to use different commands

  1. Download latest stable release from GitHub:

    wget https://github.com/macie/unittest.sh/releases/latest/download/unittest

  2. (OPTIONAL) Verify downloading:

    wget https://github.com/macie/unittest.sh/releases/latest/download/unittest.sha256sum
sha256sum -c unittest.sha256sum

  3. Set execute permission:

    chmod +x unittest

  4. Move to directory from PATH environment variable:

    mv unittest /usr/local/bin/

Development version

git clone [email protected]:macie/unittest.sh.git
cd unittest.sh
make && make install

Development

Use make (GNU or BSD):

  • make - run checks
  • make test - run test
  • make check - perform static code analysis
  • make install - install in /usr/local/bin
  • make dist - prepare for distributing
  • make clean - remove distributed artifacts
  • make release - tag latest commit as a new release
  • make info - print system info (useful for debugging).

Versioning

unittest is versioned according to the scheme YY.0M.MICRO (calendar versioning). Releases are tagged in Git.

Alternatives

Robert Lehmann created a list of the most popular shell testing tools. The main difference between them and this project: unittest is idiomatic to Unix. It uses only POSIX commands and standard output in a simple format. So the result can be easily transformed or extended.

The only comparable alternative is to run tests manually (as described below).

Brief theory of shell testing

From its beginning, Unix is test-friendly. The simplest shell test is based on exit codes:

$ command && echo PASS || echo FAIL
PASS

Commands which don't crash by default are relatively common. Many practical tests verify what command do (with a little help from standard Unix tools):

$ [ -n "$(command)" ] && echo PASS || echo FAIL
PASS
$ command | grep 'expected output' && echo PASS || echo FAIL
PASS

Tests for further usage can be wrapped by function inside shell script:

$ test_command.sh <<EOF
test_run() {
    command
}

test_output() {
    command | grep 'expected output'
}
EOF

The exit code of the function is the same as the exit code of the last command in the function, so after sourcing we can use them as before:

$ . test_command.sh
$ test_output && echo PASS || echo FAIL
PASS

Finally, all tests from a file can be run with some grep and loop. And this is basically unittest.