How do I pass parameters to tests in an Automake input file?

Question

In my Makefile.am, I have the following test:

TESTS += tests/test1
check_PROGRAMS += tests/test1
tests_test1_SOURCES = tests/test1.c
tests_test1_CPPFLAGS = ...
tests_test1_LDADD = ...

test1 is compiled and run when make check is invoked. How should Makefile.am be modified to pass a command line argument to test1?

adl · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-25T13:45:02.810

14

You cannot pass arguments to tests.

Instead of

TESTS += tests/test1

do

TESTS += tests/test1.test
EXTRA_DIST += tests/test1.test

where tests/test1.test is an executable shell script that will run your program with any argument you wish:

#!/bin/sh
tests/test1 args... < $srcdir/tests/distributed-input-file

edited Mar 25 '12 at 13:45

answered Mar 25 '12 at 07:10

adl

+1 for the answering my rather different question of whether there was a way to use `$srcdir` in test scripts - turns out it's just that simple :) – underscore_d Jul 26 '17 at 13:49

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 16 '14 at 19:02

You can also pass parameters via the environment. This is handy when you want to pass different parameters in different runs of make check.

Say you have tests/test1.test with the following:

#!/bin/bash
tests/test1 $TEST_FLAGS < $srcdir/tests/distributed-input-file

Now, you can run the following:

$ TEST_FLAGS=--verbose make check

And the --verbose flag would be passed to your test program whenever you want it to display extra info for debugging purposes.

2 Answers2