ATF(7) BSD Miscellaneous Information Manual ATF(7)NAME
ATF — introduction to the Automated Testing Framework
DESCRIPTION
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 col‐
lection 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 pro‐
vides an introductory tests(7) manual page. You are encouraged to read
it now.
License
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
Components
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 multi‐
ple 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-check(1) Executes a command and checks that its exit code,
its standard output and its standard error output
match pre-specified expected values.
atf-config(1) Queries static configuration information.
atf-report(1) Converts the output of atf-run to user-friendly
and/or machine-parseable reports.
atf-run(1) Automates the execution of a series of test pro‐
grams and collects their results in a unified
report.
atf-sh(1) Shell interpreter for shell-based test programs.
Programming interfaces:
atf-c-api(3) C programming interface for test programs.
atf-c++-api(3) C++ programming interface for test programs.
atf-sh-api(3) POSIX shell programming interface for test pro‐
grams.
Other:
atf-formats(5) Description of the machine-parseable data formats
used by the tools.
atf-test-case(4) Generic description of test cases, independent of
the language they are implemented in.
atf-test-program(1) Common interface provided by the test programs
written using the ATF libraries.
Recommended reading order
For end users wishing to run tests:
1. tests(7) (only if provided by your operating system).
2. atf-test-program(1)
3. atf-run(1)
4. atf-report(1)
5. atf-config(1)
For developers wanting to write their own tests:
1. Everything recommended to users.
2. atf-test-case(4)
3. atf-c-api(3)
4. atf-c++-api(3)
5. atf-sh-api(3)
6. atf-sh(1)
7. atf-check(1)
For those interested in ATF internals:
1. Everything recommended to users.
2. Everything recommended to developers.
3. atf-formats(5)SEE ALSOtests(7)HISTORY
ATF started as a Google Summer of Code 2007 project mentored by The Net‐
BSD 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 oper‐
ating system.
For more details on this subject, please see:
/usr/share/doc/atf/NEWS
/usr/share/doc/atf/ROADMAP
AUTHORS
For more details on the people that made ATF possible, please see:
/usr/share/doc/atf/AUTHORS
BSD August 28, 2010 BSD
