ATF(7) | Miscellaneous Information Manual | ATF(7) |
ATF
— introduction
to the Automated Testing Framework
IMPORTANT: If you are here because you want to know how to run the tests in /usr/tests, you most likely want to read the tests(7) manual page instead.
The Automated Testing Framework (ATF
) is a
collection of libraries and utilities designed to ease unattended
application testing in the hands of developers and end users of a specific
piece of software.
As regards developers, ATF
provides the
necessary means to easily create test suites composed of multiple test
programs, which in turn are a collection of test cases. It also attempts to
simplify the debugging of problems when these test cases detect an error by
providing as much information as possible about the failure.
As regards users, it simplifies the process of running the test suites and, in special, encourages end users to run them often: they do not need to have source trees around nor any other development tools installed to be able to certify that a given piece of software works on their machine as advertised.
If your operating systems distributes ATF
,
it is possible that it provides an introductory
tests(7) manual page. You are
encouraged to read it now.
ATF
is distributed under the terms of the
TNF License, a 2-clause BSD license. For more details please see:
/usr/share/doc/atf/COPYING
ATF
is a highly modular piece of software.
It provides a couple of libraries to ease the implementation of test
programs: one for the C and C++ languages and another one for shell scripts.
It also includes multiple small utilities that follow the principle of doing
a single thing but doing it right. This section outlines which these
components are.
Public utilities:
atf-run
to user-friendly
and/or machine-parseable reports.Programming interfaces:
Other:
ATF
libraries.For end users wishing to run tests:
For developers wanting to write their own tests:
For those interested in ATF
internals:
ATF
started as a Google Summer of Code
2007 project mentored by The NetBSD Foundation. Its original goal was to
provide a testing framework for The NetBSD Operating System, but it grew as
an independent project because the framework itself did not need to be tied
to a specific operating system.
For more details on this subject, please see:
/usr/share/doc/atf/NEWS /usr/share/doc/atf/ROADMAP
For more details on the people that made
ATF
possible, please see:
/usr/share/doc/atf/AUTHORS
August 28, 2010 | NetBSD 10.99 |