test.txt

Notes on tests

Introduction
Prerequisites
Running tests
Command summary
Commands and modules
Test scripts
Checking test script output
Output files
Using other unit testing frameworks


Introduction

These notes explain how to script and run tests on the PyModel
software itself.  These notes are not about using PyModel to test
other programs -- that is described elsewhere.

These notes explain how to re-execute the test scripts included in the
distribution, including the tests of all the samples.  These scripts
demonstrate the samples, as well as testing PyModel itself.

These notes describe our unit tests, along with our little homemade
unit testing commands: tpath, trun, tdiff, and tclean.  These commands
are independent of the rest of PyModel (they could be used to test any
program that writes to stdout).  We use these (instead of a
conventional unit test framework like unittest or nose) because:

 - The units we test here are not function calls or method calls,
 but entire program invocations including command line arguments.

 - The results that our tests check are not function or method return
 values, but the entire output from a program run, including all the
 output to stdout and stderr, and (sometimes) other output files.

The last section (below) explains how to script tests similar to ours
using the unittest module from the Python standard library.


Prerequisites

These directions apply to both Windows and Unix-like systems
(including Linux and Mac OS X).  The directions assume that Python is
already installed and your environment is configured so you can run it
(if not, see http://docs.python.org/2/using/).  It also assumes that
the upacked PyModel directories are present on your system, the
contents of its PyModel/pymodel directory are on your Python path, the
contents of its PyModel/bin directory are on your execution path, and
your current directory is on your Python path.  You can achieve this
by executing PyModel/bin/pymodel_paths, or the commands therein.
Alternatively, you can install the contents of PyModel/pymodel and
PyModel/bin into system directories but then you may need to execute
the command "source tpath" in each session (terminal window) before
you execute any PyModel commands (or just "tpath" on Windows).
For more details see PyModel/INSTALL.txt.


Running tests

Confirm that PyModel works for you by running some of the test scripts
in the samples directories.  For example, in
PyModel/samples/PowerSwitch, type the command:

 trun test 

(not python test.py).  You should then see output from several runs of
the pmt program as it executes the PowerSwitch model.

To run regression tests that confirm tests generate the expected output, type:

 tdiff trun test

if there are more test*.py files besides test.py, you can run them too:

 tdiff trun test_scenarios

etc.  If messages indicate differences were found, there may be a
problem.  Or maybe not (see Checking test script output, below).  If
messages indicate there is no .ref file, it means that this test
script is not deterministic and the tdiff command is not meaningful
-- instead just run trun test (or whatever).


Command Summary

commands in bin directory
  tpath     - put current directory on PYTHONPATH, needed by trun
  tpath.bat - ditto, batch script for Windows
  trun      - execute test script module named in argument
  tdiff     - execute command (usually trun ...), compare output to reference
  tdiff.bat - ditto, batch script for Windows
  tclean    - remove output files created by running test scripts
  tclean.bat - ditto, batch script for Windows

The tdiff command was called clogdiff in PyModel versions before 1.0.
The clogdiff command is retained for backwards compatibility, but is
deprecated.

Programs and scripts in the pymodel directory
  trun.py - executes test script module given as argument
  
In each model directory: samples/PowerSwitch,  samples/WebApplication/Model,...

  test.py - test script module, executed by trun
  test.log - most recent output from test.py, including stdout and stderr, 
              saved by tdiff 
  test.ref - sample test.log from from test.py, including stdout and stderr, 
              renamed by hand, used by tdiff
  test_scenarios.py, test_graphics.py, ...  - other test script modules
  test_scenarios.ref ...  - etc., like test.ref
  fsmpy/ - directory of FSM Python modules written by pma.py (maybe via pmv.py)
            moved here by hand
  svg/ - directory of .svg graphics files written by pma.py + pmg.py + 
          dot scripts (maybe via pmv.py), moved here by hand
  pdf/ -  ditto, .pdf (not many of these), moved here by hand


Programs, Modules, and Commands

In these notes, "the foo module" or "the foo program" means the Python
module in the file foo.py.  The "the bar command" means the bar shell
script on Unix-like systems, and the bar.bat batch command file on
Windows.  Both are provided; simply invoking "bar" invokes the right
command on either kind of system.  In general we use Python modules to
perform operations that can easily be coded in a system-independent
way, and shell scripts (or batch commands) for operations that are
more easily coded with particular system-dependent commands (for
example: setting the execution path, checking differences between
files).

Invoke the four PyModel programs on the command line or in scripts by
name, without using the .py extension (pmt not pmt.py).  You can also
include the .py extension (pmt.py not just pmt); some older scripts you
may still have used this form.  BUT to use this form, you must put
PyModel/pymodel on your execution path (not just your Python path).


Test scripts

The pymodel directory contains a trun module for running test
scripts.

A test script for trun is another module that MUST contain an
attribute named cases: the list of test cases, represented by pairs of
strings.  In each pair, the first string is a description of the test
case and the second string is the command line that invokes the test
case.  

Here are the contents of the script in samples/WebApplication/Model/test.py:

cases = [
 ('Test: -a option includes only Initialize Action',
  'pmt -n 10 -a Initialize WebModel'),

 ('Test: -e option excludes all Login, Logout actions',
  'pmt -n 10 -e Login_Start -e Login_Finish -e Logout WebModel'),
]

The trun module takes one argument, the module name of the script (NOT
the file name, there is no path prefix or .py suffix).  The trun
module imports the script, then iterates over the cases list, printing
each description and invoking each command.

It is typical to put a script named test in each source directory that
contains modules to test.  This command executes it:

 trun test

For this command to work, the pymodel directory must be on the Python
path, and the current directory must be on the Python path.  This is
necessary to enable PyModel tools (such as pmt) in the pymodel
directory to import modules in the current directory.  The
PyModel/bin/pymodel_paths command assigns these paths.  


Checking test script output

Executing a test script typically writes a lot of output to the
terminal (that is, to stdout and stderr).  For regression testing, use
the tdiff command in the pymodel directory.  tdiff runs a
command, collects the output to stdout and stderr in a log file and
compares it to a reference log file.  To use it, make a reference log
file first:

 trun test >& test.ref

(But on Windows systems you must use > and >& and only stdout not
stderr is captured in test.ref.)

Then invoke tdiff:

 tdiff trun test

On Unix-like systems (including Linux and Mac OS X), tdiff prints
no output when there are no differences, and only prints out any
differences that it finds.  On Windows systems, tdiff.bat prints

 Comparing files test.log and TEST.REF
 FC: no differences encountered

when there are no differences.

Be warned that on Windows systems "tdiff trun test_graphics" writes
a lot of output to the screen, but the line "FC: no differences
encountered" should appear at the end. (On Unix-like systems, nothing
more should appear.)  Apparently all this output is stderr output from
the graphviz dot program, which is not captured or checked by
tdiff.

Be warned that if you use .ref files generated on one system and
execute tdiff on another system, differences may be reported even
when the programs work correctly, in cases where PyModel randomly
selects actions and action arguments (as it does in many scripts).
Apparently, the functions from the random module that PyModel uses
behave differently on different systems, even when started with the
same seed (the pmt -s option, which is supposed to make the random
selections repeatable).  In particular, some of the .ref files
included in the PyModel distribution may cause tdiff to report
differences on your system.

Differences may also be reported because command prompts or file paths
appear in the output, and these were different when the .ref file was
generated.

If tdiff reports differences, examine the output (in the .log file)
to determine whether the differences indicate errors, or are merely
due to different randomly selected choices on your system, or to
environmental differences like command prompts or file paths.  In the
latter case, you can create a new .ref file for your system by copying
the latest .log file over the .ref file.

In some of the test scripts, the random seed (given in the pmt -s
option) was chosen (found by trial and error) that results in
interesting test behavior (a long run with many different actions).
That same seed value might not result in such interesting behavior on
your system, so you may wish to edit the test script to experiment
with different seed values.  In some samples there are variant test
scripts with different seed values.  For example in samples/Socket
there is test.py, test_windows.py, and test_linux.py, along with the
corresponding .ref files.

In the .log and .ref files, the output from all the test cases (that
is generated by the programs under test) appears first in the file,
then all the test descriptions from the test script that are printed
by trun appear after all the test case output, at the end of the file.

If a test case crashes (raises an unhandled exception) on Windows, the
traceback goes to the screen, not the log file.  I can't find anything
in Windows like Unix >& to redirect error output also.


Output files

The PyModel pmt command only writes to the terminal (to stdout and
stderr), but other PyModel commands write output files: pma writes
another module (.py file) that contains the generated FSM, pmg
writes a .dot file with commands for the Graphviz dot program, and the
various dot commands (dotsvg etc.) write graphics files: .svg, .pdf,
.ps etc.  The pmv program invokes all of these programs and causes all
of these files to be written.

The PyModel programs write all of these output files in the current
working directory, so each time you repeat a test, all of its output
files are overwritten (in the same way that the test.log file is
overwitten).  In the PyModel distribution, we provide copies of some
of the output files we made (on our development system) so you can
compare them to yours (that you generate when you repeat the tests on
your system).  In some samples directories, there may be an fsmpy
directory which contains FSM modules written by pma, and there may
be an svg or pdf directory which contains .svg files written by pma +
pmg + dot (or pmv).  You may wish to copy output files that you
generate into these directories, so you can compare them to output
from tests that you run later (in much the same way that the .ref
files are used to compare output to stdout).

The pmclean command removes these test output files from the current
directory.  It does not remove them from the fsmpy or svg
subdirectories (or any other subdirectories).  All of the files
removed by pmclean can be easily recreated just by running the test
scripts again.


Using other unit testing frameworks

Our trun and tdiff commands, along with our test scripts, comprise
a very simple homemade unit testing framework, an alternative to the
popular Python unit test frameworks such as unittest or nose.

We chose to create our own (very simple) unit test framework for this
project for two reasons:

1. The units we want to test are not function calls or method calls,
but entire program invocations including command line arguments.

2. The results we want our tests to check are not function or method
return values, but the entire output from a program run.

The popular unit test frameworks are not so well-suited for this kind
of test.  However, you can use one of the popular frameworks if you
prefer, as an alterative to our trun command and our test scripts.
There is an example in the samples/populations directory.  The module
test_populations there works with unittest to run the same tests
as in tests.  That is, instead of

 trun tests  # test with our homemade framework

You can do 

 python test_populations.py -v   # test with unittest

You can see that test_populations.py is more verbose than test.py, and
the test output is also more verbose (the -v option here just commands
unittest to print the docstring for each test case).  The
test_populations.py module merely executes the tests, it does not
check the results (it uses no assertions).  To check the results, you
could capture and check the output using our tdiff command, just as
you would do with with test.py.

Revised May 2013