31.4. TAP Tests
Various tests, particularly the client program tests
under
src/bin
, use the Perl TAP tools and are run
using the Perl testing program
prove
. You can pass
command-line options to
prove
by setting
the
make
variable
PROVE_FLAGS
, for example:
make -C src/bin check PROVE_FLAGS='--timer'
See the manual page of
prove
for more information.
The
make
variable
PROVE_TESTS
can be used to define a whitespace-separated list of paths relative
to the
Makefile
invoking
prove
to run the specified subset of tests instead of the default
t/*.pl
. For example:
make check PROVE_TESTS='t/001_test1.pl t/003_test3.pl'
The TAP tests require the Perl module
IPC::Run
.
This module is available from
CPAN
or an operating system package.
They also require
PostgreSQL
to be
configured with the option
--enable-tap-tests
.
Generically speaking, the TAP tests will test the executables in a
previously-installed installation tree if you say
make
installcheck
, or will build a new local installation tree from
current sources if you say
make check
. In either
case they will initialize a local instance (data directory) and
transiently run a server in it. Some of these tests run more than one
server. Thus, these tests can be fairly resource-intensive.
It's important to realize that the TAP tests will start test server(s)
even when you say
make installcheck
; this is unlike
the traditional non-TAP testing infrastructure, which expects to use an
already-running test server in that case. Some PostgreSQL
subdirectories contain both traditional-style and TAP-style tests,
meaning that
make installcheck
will produce a mix of
results from temporary servers and the already-running test server.
31.4.1. Environment Variables #
Data directories are named according to the test filename, and will be
retained if a test fails. If the environment variable
PG_TEST_NOCLEAN
is set, data directories will be
retained regardless of test status. For example, retaining the data
directory regardless of test results when running the
pg_dump
tests:
PG_TEST_NOCLEAN=1 make -C src/bin/pg_dump check
This environment variable also prevents the test's temporary directories from being removed.
Many operations in the test suites use a 180-second timeout, which on slow
hosts may lead to load-induced timeouts. Setting the environment variable
PG_TEST_TIMEOUT_DEFAULT
to a higher number will change
the default to avoid this.