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 butd tests manually, launch src/test/test_but.
To add more butd 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_AUTO_TEST_SUITE sections.
To run the but-qt tests manually, launch src/qt/test/test_but-qt
To add more but-qt tests, add them to the src/qt/test/ directory and
the src/qt/test/test_main.cpp file.
test_but has some built-in command-line arguments; for example, to run just the getarg_tests verbosely:
test_but --log_level=all --run_test=getarg_tests
... or to run just the doublebut test:
test_but --run_test=getarg_tests/doublebut
Run test_but --help for the full list.
The sources in this directory are unit test cases. Boost includes a unit testing framework, and since But Core 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_but
that runs all of the unit tests. The main source file is called
test_but.cpp. 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 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/.