Running tests

Coverage analysis

A coverage analysis report is available online You can build it yourself:

# nix build .#hydraJobs.coverage
# xdg-open ./result/index.html

Extensive records of build metrics, such as test coverage over time, are also available online.

Unit-tests

The unit tests are defined using the googletest and rapidcheck frameworks.

Source and header layout

An example of some files, demonstrating much of what is described below

src
├── libexpr
│   ├── meson.build
│   ├── include/nix/expr/value/context.hh
│   ├── value/context.cc
│   …
│
├── libutil-tests
│   ├── meson.build
│   …
│   ├── data
│   │   ├── git/tree.txt
│       …
│
├── libexpr-test-support
│   ├── meson.build
│   ├── include/nix/expr
│   │   ├── meson.build
│   │   └── tests
│   │       ├── value/context.hh
│   │       …
│   ├── tests
│       ├── value/context.cc
│       …
│
├── libexpr-tests
│   ├── meson.build
│   ├── value/context.cc
│    …
…

The tests for each Nix library (libnixexpr, libnixstore, etc..) live inside a directory src/${library_name_without-nix}-test. Given an interface (header) and implementation pair in the original library, say, src/libexpr/include/nix/expr/value/context.hh and src/libexpr/value/context.cc, we write tests for it in src/libexpr-tests/value/context.cc, and (possibly) declare/define additional interfaces for testing purposes in src/libexpr-test-support/include/nix/expr/tests/value/context.hh and src/libexpr-test-support/tests/value/context.cc.

Data for unit tests is stored in a data subdir of the directory for each unit test executable. For example, libnixstore code is in src/libstore, and its test data is in src/libstore-tests/data. The path to the src/${library_name_without-nix}-test/data directory is passed to the unit test executable with the environment variable _NIX_TEST_UNIT_DATA. Note that each executable only gets the data for its tests.

The unit test libraries are in src/${library_name_without-nix}-test-support. All headers are in a tests subdirectory so they are included with #include "nix/tests/".

The use of all these separate directories for the unit tests might seem inconvenient, as for example the tests are not "right next to" the part of the code they are testing. But organizing the tests this way has one big benefit: there is no risk of any build-system wildcards for the library accidentally picking up test code that should not built and installed as part of the library.

Running tests

You can run the whole testsuite with meson test from the Meson build directory, or the tests for a specific component with meson test nix-store-tests. The environment variables that Google Test accepts are also worth knowing:

GTEST_FILTER

This is used for finer-grained filtering of which tests to run.
GTEST_BRIEF

This is used to avoid logging passing tests.
GTEST_BREAK_ON_FAILURE

This is used to create a debugger breakpoint when an assertion failure occurs.

Putting the first two together, one might run

GTEST_BRIEF=1 GTEST_FILTER='ErrorTraceTest.*' meson test nix-expr-tests -v

for short but comprensive output.

Debugging tests

For debugging, it is useful to combine the third option above with Meson's --gdb flag:

GTEST_BRIEF=1 GTEST_FILTER='Group.my-failing-test' meson test nix-expr-tests --gdb

This will:

Run the unit test with GDB
Run just Group.my-failing-test
Stop the program when the test fails, allowing the user to then issue arbitrary commands to GDB.

Characterisation testing { #characterisation-testing-unit }

See functional characterisation testing for a broader discussion of characterisation testing.

Like with the functional characterisation, _NIX_TEST_ACCEPT=1 is also used. For example:

$ _NIX_TEST_ACCEPT=1 meson test nix-store-tests -v
...
[  SKIPPED ] WorkerProtoTest.string_read
[  SKIPPED ] WorkerProtoTest.string_write
[  SKIPPED ] WorkerProtoTest.storePath_read
[  SKIPPED ] WorkerProtoTest.storePath_write
...

will regenerate the "golden master" expected result for the libnixstore characterisation tests. The characterisation tests will mark themselves "skipped" since they regenerated the expected result instead of actually testing anything.

JSON Schema testing

In doc/manual/source/protocols/json/ we have a number of manual pages generated from JSON Schema. That JSON schema is tested against the JSON file test data used in characterisation tests for JSON (de)serialization, in src/json-schema-checks. Between the JSON (de)serialization testing, and this testing of the same data against the schema, we make sure that the manual, the implementation, and a machine-readable schema are are all in sync.

Unit test support libraries

There are headers and code which are not just used to test the library in question, but also downstream libraries. For example, we do property testing with the rapidcheck library. This requires writing Arbitrary "instances", which are used to describe how to generate values of a given type for the sake of running property tests. Because types contain other types, Arbitrary "instances" for some type are not just useful for testing that type, but also any other type that contains it. Downstream types frequently contain upstream types, so it is very important that we share arbitrary instances so that downstream libraries' property tests can also use them.

It is important that these testing libraries don't contain any actual tests themselves. On some platforms they would be run as part of every test executable that uses them, which is redundant. On other platforms they wouldn't be run at all.

Functional tests

The functional tests reside under the tests/functional directory and are listed in tests/functional/meson.build. Each test is a bash script.

Functional tests are run during installCheck in the nix package build, as well as separately from the build, in VM tests.

Running the whole test suite

The whole test suite (functional and unit tests) can be run with:

$ checkPhase

Grouping tests

Sometimes it is useful to group related tests so they can be easily run together without running the entire test suite. Each test group is in a subdirectory of tests. For example, tests/functional/ca/meson.build defines a ca test group for content-addressing derivation outputs.

That test group can be run like this:

$ meson test --suite ca
ninja: Entering directory `/home/jcericson/src/nix/master/build'
ninja: no work to do.
[1-20/20] 🌑 nix-functional-tests:ca / ca/why-depends                                1/20 nix-functional-tests:ca / ca/nix-run                                  OK               0.16s
[2-20/20] 🌒 nix-functional-tests:ca / ca/why-depends                                2/20 nix-functional-tests:ca / ca/import-derivation                        OK               0.17s

Running individual tests

Individual tests can be run with meson:

$ meson test --verbose ${testName}
ninja: Entering directory `/home/jcericson/src/nix/master/build'
ninja: no work to do.
1/1 nix-functional-tests:main / ${testName}        OK               0.41s

Ok:                 1
Expected Fail:      0
Fail:               0
Unexpected Pass:    0
Skipped:            0
Timeout:            0

Full log written to /home/jcericson/src/nix/master/build/meson-logs/testlog.txt

The --verbose flag will make Meson also show the console output of each test for easier debugging. The test script will then be traced with set -x and the output displayed as it happens, regardless of whether the test succeeds or fails.

Tests can be also run directly without meson:

$ TEST_NAME=${testName} NIX_REMOTE='' PS4='+(${BASH_SOURCE[0]-$0}:$LINENO) tests/functional/${testName}.sh
+(${testName}.sh:1) foo
output from foo
+(${testName}.sh:2) bar
output from bar
...

Debugging failing functional tests

When a functional test fails, it usually does so somewhere in the middle of the script.

To figure out what's wrong, it is convenient to run the test regularly up to the failing nix command, and then run that command with a debugger like GDB.

For example, if the script looks like:

foo
nix blah blub
bar

edit it like so:

 foo
-nix blah blub
+gdb --args nix blah blub
 bar

Then, running the test with --interactive will prevent Meson from hijacking the terminal so you can drop you into GDB once the script reaches that point:

$ meson test ${testName} --interactive
...
+ gdb blash blub
GNU gdb (GDB) 12.1
...
(gdb)

One can debug the Nix invocation in all the usual ways. For example, enter run to start the Nix invocation.

Characterisation testing { #characterisation-testing-functional }

Occasionally, Nix utilizes a technique called Characterisation Testing as part of the functional tests. This technique is to include the exact output/behavior of a former version of Nix in a test in order to check that Nix continues to produce the same behavior going forward.

For example, this technique is used for the language tests, to check both the printed final value if evaluation was successful, and any errors and warnings encountered.

It is frequently useful to regenerate the expected output. To do that, rerun the failed test(s) with _NIX_TEST_ACCEPT=1. For example:

_NIX_TEST_ACCEPT=1 meson test lang

This convention is shared with the characterisation unit tests too.

An interesting situation to document is the case when these tests are "overfitted". The language tests are, again, an example of this. The expected successful output of evaluation is supposed to be highly stable – we do not intend to make breaking changes to (the stable parts of) the Nix language. However, the errors and warnings during evaluation (successful or not) are not stable in this way. We are free to change how they are displayed at any time.

It may be surprising that we would test non-normative behavior like diagnostic outputs. Diagnostic outputs are indeed not a stable interface, but they still are important to users. By recording the expected output, the test suite guards against accidental changes, and ensure the result (not just the code that implements it) of the diagnostic code paths are under code review. Regressions are caught, and improvements always show up in code review.

To ensure that characterisation testing doesn't make it harder to intentionally change these interfaces, there always must be an easy way to regenerate the expected output, as we do with _NIX_TEST_ACCEPT=1.

Running functional tests on NixOS

We run the functional tests not just in the build, but also in VM tests. This helps us ensure that Nix works correctly on NixOS, and environments that have similar characteristics that are hard to reproduce in a build environment.

These can be run with:

nix build .#hydraJobs.tests.functional_user

Generally, this build is sufficient, but in nightly or CI we also test the attributes functional_root and functional_trusted, in which the test suite is run with different levels of authorization.

Integration tests

The integration tests are defined in the Nix flake under the hydraJobs.tests attribute. These tests include everything that needs to interact with external services or run Nix in a non-trivial distributed setup. Because these tests are expensive and require more than what the standard github-actions setup provides, most of them only run on the master branch (on https://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nix/master).

You can run them manually with nix build .#hydraJobs.tests.{testName} or nix-build -A hydraJobs.tests.{testName}.

Installer tests

GitHub Actions CI in the Nix repository also tests the installer on PRs. It does not require additional setup and utilises GHA Artifacts and can be run in any Nix repository fork.

The tests job generates installers for the platforms below and uploads them as an artifact:
- x86_64-linux
- aarch64-darwin
The installer_test job (which runs on Linux and macOS) will try to install Nix with the cached installer and run a trivial Nix command.
Both the scripted installer and the standalone Rust-based installer are tested.

You can generate the installer tarball and script manually by running nix build .#hydraJobs.installerScriptForGHA.<system-double>.

Working on documentation

Using the CI-generated installer for manual testing

After the CI run completes, you can check the output to extract the installer artifact:

Click into the detailed view of the CI run.
Scroll down to Artifacts section.
Download the corresponding installer artifact (installer-darwin for aarch64-darwin and installer-linux for x86_64-linux).
Unpack the downloaded .zip artifact.
To generate an install command, plug the path to the unpacked artifact into this template:
```
sh <path/to/artifact>/install --tarball-url-prefix file://<path/to/artifact>
```