1 =================================
2 LLVM Testing Infrastructure Guide
3 =================================
11 TestSuiteMakefileGuide
16 This document is the reference manual for the LLVM testing
17 infrastructure. It documents the structure of the LLVM testing
18 infrastructure, the tools needed to use it, and how to add and run
24 In order to use the LLVM testing infrastructure, you will need all of the
25 software required to build LLVM, as well as `Python <http://python.org>`_ 2.5 or
28 LLVM testing infrastructure organization
29 ========================================
31 The LLVM testing infrastructure contains two major categories of tests:
32 regression tests and whole programs. The regression tests are contained
33 inside the LLVM repository itself under ``llvm/test`` and are expected
34 to always pass -- they should be run before every commit.
36 The whole programs tests are referred to as the "LLVM test suite" (or
37 "test-suite") and are in the ``test-suite`` module in subversion. For
38 historical reasons, these tests are also referred to as the "nightly
39 tests" in places, which is less ambiguous than "test-suite" and remains
40 in use although we run them much more often than nightly.
45 The regression tests are small pieces of code that test a specific
46 feature of LLVM or trigger a specific bug in LLVM. The language they are
47 written in depends on the part of LLVM being tested. These tests are driven by
48 the :doc:`Lit <CommandGuide/lit>` testing tool (which is part of LLVM), and
49 are located in the ``llvm/test`` directory.
51 Typically when a bug is found in LLVM, a regression test containing just
52 enough code to reproduce the problem should be written and placed
53 somewhere underneath this directory. For example, it can be a small
54 piece of LLVM IR distilled from an actual application or benchmark.
59 The test suite contains whole programs, which are pieces of code which
60 can be compiled and linked into a stand-alone program that can be
61 executed. These programs are generally written in high level languages
64 These programs are compiled using a user specified compiler and set of
65 flags, and then executed to capture the program output and timing
66 information. The output of these programs is compared to a reference
67 output to ensure that the program is being compiled correctly.
69 In addition to compiling and executing programs, whole program tests
70 serve as a way of benchmarking LLVM performance, both in terms of the
71 efficiency of the programs generated as well as the speed with which
72 LLVM compiles, optimizes, and generates code.
74 The test-suite is located in the ``test-suite`` Subversion module.
76 Debugging Information tests
77 ---------------------------
79 The test suite contains tests to check quality of debugging information.
80 The test are written in C based languages or in LLVM assembly language.
82 These tests are compiled and run under a debugger. The debugger output
83 is checked to validate of debugging information. See README.txt in the
84 test suite for more information . This test suite is located in the
85 ``debuginfo-tests`` Subversion module.
90 The tests are located in two separate Subversion modules. The
91 regressions tests are in the main "llvm" module under the directory
92 ``llvm/test`` (so you get these tests for free with the main LLVM tree).
93 Use ``make check-all`` to run the regression tests after building LLVM.
95 The more comprehensive test suite that includes whole programs in C and C++
96 is in the ``test-suite`` module. See :ref:`test-suite Quickstart
97 <test-suite-quickstart>` for more information on running these tests.
102 To run all of the LLVM regression tests, use the master Makefile in the
103 ``llvm/test`` directory. LLVM Makefiles require GNU Make (read the :doc:`LLVM
104 Makefile Guide <MakefileGuide>` for more details):
116 If you have `Clang <http://clang.llvm.org/>`_ checked out and built, you
117 can run the LLVM and Clang tests simultaneously using:
123 To run the tests with Valgrind (Memcheck by default), use the ``LIT_ARGS`` make
124 variable to pass the required options to lit. For example, you can use:
128 % make check LIT_ARGS="-v --vg --vg-leak"
130 to enable testing with valgrind and with leak checking enabled.
132 To run individual tests or subsets of tests, you can use the ``llvm-lit``
133 script which is built as part of LLVM. For example, to run the
134 ``Integer/BitPacked.ll`` test by itself you can run:
138 % llvm-lit ~/llvm/test/Integer/BitPacked.ll
140 or to run all of the ARM CodeGen tests:
144 % llvm-lit ~/llvm/test/CodeGen/ARM
146 For more information on using the :program:`lit` tool, see ``llvm-lit --help``
147 or the :doc:`lit man page <CommandGuide/lit>`.
149 Debugging Information tests
150 ---------------------------
152 To run debugging information tests simply checkout the tests inside
153 clang/test directory.
158 % svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/debuginfo-tests/trunk debuginfo-tests
160 These tests are already set up to run as part of clang regression tests.
162 Regression test structure
163 =========================
165 The LLVM regression tests are driven by :program:`lit` and are located in the
166 ``llvm/test`` directory.
168 This directory contains a large array of small tests that exercise
169 various features of LLVM and to ensure that regressions do not occur.
170 The directory is broken into several sub-directories, each focused on a
171 particular area of LLVM.
173 Writing new regression tests
174 ----------------------------
176 The regression test structure is very simple, but does require some
177 information to be set. This information is gathered via ``configure``
178 and is written to a file, ``test/lit.site.cfg`` in the build directory.
179 The ``llvm/test`` Makefile does this work for you.
181 In order for the regression tests to work, each directory of tests must
182 have a ``lit.local.cfg`` file. :program:`lit` looks for this file to determine
183 how to run the tests. This file is just Python code and thus is very
184 flexible, but we've standardized it for the LLVM regression tests. If
185 you're adding a directory of tests, just copy ``lit.local.cfg`` from
186 another directory to get running. The standard ``lit.local.cfg`` simply
187 specifies which files to look in for tests. Any directory that contains
188 only directories does not need the ``lit.local.cfg`` file. Read the :doc:`Lit
189 documentation <CommandGuide/lit>` for more information.
191 Each test file must contain lines starting with "RUN:" that tell :program:`lit`
192 how to run it. If there are no RUN lines, :program:`lit` will issue an error
193 while running a test.
195 RUN lines are specified in the comments of the test program using the
196 keyword ``RUN`` followed by a colon, and lastly the command (pipeline)
197 to execute. Together, these lines form the "script" that :program:`lit`
198 executes to run the test case. The syntax of the RUN lines is similar to a
199 shell's syntax for pipelines including I/O redirection and variable
200 substitution. However, even though these lines may *look* like a shell
201 script, they are not. RUN lines are interpreted by :program:`lit`.
202 Consequently, the syntax differs from shell in a few ways. You can specify
203 as many RUN lines as needed.
205 :program:`lit` performs substitution on each RUN line to replace LLVM tool names
206 with the full paths to the executable built for each tool (in
207 ``$(LLVM_OBJ_ROOT)/$(BuildMode)/bin)``. This ensures that :program:`lit` does
208 not invoke any stray LLVM tools in the user's path during testing.
210 Each RUN line is executed on its own, distinct from other lines unless
211 its last character is ``\``. This continuation character causes the RUN
212 line to be concatenated with the next one. In this way you can build up
213 long pipelines of commands without making huge line lengths. The lines
214 ending in ``\`` are concatenated until a RUN line that doesn't end in
215 ``\`` is found. This concatenated set of RUN lines then constitutes one
216 execution. :program:`lit` will substitute variables and arrange for the pipeline
217 to be executed. If any process in the pipeline fails, the entire line (and
218 test case) fails too.
220 Below is an example of legal RUN lines in a ``.ll`` file:
224 ; RUN: llvm-as < %s | llvm-dis > %t1
225 ; RUN: llvm-dis < %s.bc-13 > %t2
228 As with a Unix shell, the RUN lines permit pipelines and I/O
229 redirection to be used.
231 There are some quoting rules that you must pay attention to when writing
232 your RUN lines. In general nothing needs to be quoted. :program:`lit` won't
233 strip off any quote characters so they will get passed to the invoked program.
234 To avoid this use curly braces to tell :program:`lit` that it should treat
235 everything enclosed as one value.
237 In general, you should strive to keep your RUN lines as simple as possible,
238 using them only to run tools that generate textual output you can then examine.
239 The recommended way to examine output to figure out if the test passes is using
240 the :doc:`FileCheck tool <CommandGuide/FileCheck>`. *[The usage of grep in RUN
241 lines is deprecated - please do not send or commit patches that use it.]*
246 It is easy to write a fragile test that would fail spuriously if the tool being
247 tested outputs a full path to the input file. For example, :program:`opt` by
248 default outputs a ``ModuleID``:
250 .. code-block:: console
253 define i32 @main() nounwind {
257 $ opt -S /path/to/example.ll
258 ; ModuleID = '/path/to/example.ll'
260 define i32 @main() nounwind {
264 ``ModuleID`` can unexpetedly match against ``CHECK`` lines. For example:
268 ; RUN: opt -S %s | FileCheck
270 define i32 @main() nounwind {
275 This test will fail if placed into a ``download`` directory.
277 To make your tests robust, always use ``opt ... < %s`` in the RUN line.
278 :program:`opt` does not output a ``ModuleID`` when input comes from stdin.
280 Platform-Specific Tests
281 -----------------------
283 Whenever adding tests that require the knowledge of a specific platform,
284 either related to code generated, specific output or back-end features,
285 you must make sure to isolate the features, so that buildbots that
286 run on different architectures (and don't even compile all back-ends),
289 The first problem is to check for target-specific output, for example sizes
290 of structures, paths and architecture names, for example:
292 * Tests containing Windows paths will fail on Linux and vice-versa.
293 * Tests that check for ``x86_64`` somewhere in the text will fail anywhere else.
294 * Tests where the debug information calculates the size of types and structures.
296 Also, if the test rely on any behaviour that is coded in any back-end, it must
297 go in its own directory. So, for instance, code generator tests for ARM go
298 into ``test/CodeGen/ARM`` and so on. Those directories contain a special
299 ``lit`` configuration file that ensure all tests in that directory will
300 only run if a specific back-end is compiled and available.
302 For instance, on ``test/CodeGen/ARM``, the ``lit.local.cfg`` is:
304 .. code-block:: python
306 config.suffixes = ['.ll', '.c', '.cpp', '.test']
307 if not 'ARM' in config.root.targets:
308 config.unsupported = True
310 Other platform-specific tests are those that depend on a specific feature
311 of a specific sub-architecture, for example only to Intel chips that support ``AVX2``.
313 For instance, ``test/CodeGen/X86/psubus.ll`` tests three sub-architecture
318 ; RUN: llc -mcpu=core2 < %s | FileCheck %s -check-prefix=SSE2
319 ; RUN: llc -mcpu=corei7-avx < %s | FileCheck %s -check-prefix=AVX1
320 ; RUN: llc -mcpu=core-avx2 < %s | FileCheck %s -check-prefix=AVX2
322 And the checks are different:
327 ; SSE2: psubusw LCPI0_0(%rip), %xmm0
329 ; AVX1: vpsubusw LCPI0_0(%rip), %xmm0, %xmm0
331 ; AVX2: vpsubusw LCPI0_0(%rip), %xmm0, %xmm0
333 So, if you're testing for a behaviour that you know is platform-specific or
334 depends on special features of sub-architectures, you must add the specific
335 triple, test with the specific FileCheck and put it into the specific
336 directory that will filter out all other architectures.
342 Besides replacing LLVM tool names the following substitutions are performed in
346 Replaced by a single ``%``. This allows escaping other substitutions.
349 File path to the test case's source. This is suitable for passing on the
350 command line as the input to an LLVM tool.
352 Example: ``/home/user/llvm/test/MC/ELF/foo_test.s``
355 Directory path to the test case's source.
357 Example: ``/home/user/llvm/test/MC/ELF``
360 File path to a temporary file name that could be used for this test case.
361 The file name won't conflict with other test cases. You can append to it
362 if you need multiple temporaries. This is useful as the destination of
363 some redirected output.
365 Example: ``/home/user/llvm.build/test/MC/ELF/Output/foo_test.s.tmp``
370 Example: ``/home/user/llvm.build/test/MC/ELF/Output``
374 Expands to the path separator, i.e. ``:`` (or ``;`` on Windows).
377 **LLVM-specific substitutions:**
380 The suffix for the host platforms shared library files. This includes the
381 period as the first character.
383 Example: ``.so`` (Linux), ``.dylib`` (OS X), ``.dll`` (Windows)
386 The suffix for the host platforms executable files. This includes the
387 period as the first character.
389 Example: ``.exe`` (Windows), empty on Linux.
391 ``%(line)``, ``%(line+<number>)``, ``%(line-<number>)``
392 The number of the line where this substitution is used, with an optional
393 integer offset. This can be used in tests with multiple RUN lines, which
394 reference test file's line numbers.
397 **Clang-specific substitutions:**
400 Invokes the Clang driver.
403 Invokes the Clang driver for C++.
406 Invokes the CL-compatible Clang driver.
409 Invokes the G++-compatible Clang driver.
412 Invokes the Clang frontend.
414 ``%itanium_abi_triple``, ``%ms_abi_triple``
415 These substitutions can be used to get the current target triple adjusted to
416 the desired ABI. For example, if the test suite is running with the
417 ``i686-pc-win32`` target, ``%itanium_abi_triple`` will expand to
418 ``i686-pc-mingw32``. This allows a test to run with a specific ABI without
419 constraining it to a specific triple.
421 To add more substituations, look at ``test/lit.cfg`` or ``lit.local.cfg``.
427 To make RUN line writing easier, there are several helper programs. These
428 helpers are in the PATH when running tests, so you can just call them using
429 their name. For example:
432 This program runs its arguments and then inverts the result code from it.
433 Zero result codes become 1. Non-zero result codes become 0.
435 Sometimes it is necessary to mark a test case as "expected fail" or
436 XFAIL. You can easily mark a test as XFAIL just by including ``XFAIL:``
437 on a line near the top of the file. This signals that the test case
438 should succeed if the test fails. Such test cases are counted separately
439 by the testing tool. To specify an expected fail, use the XFAIL keyword
440 in the comments of the test program followed by a colon and one or more
441 failure patterns. Each failure pattern can be either ``*`` (to specify
442 fail everywhere), or a part of a target triple (indicating the test
443 should fail on that platform), or the name of a configurable feature
444 (for example, ``loadable_module``). If there is a match, the test is
445 expected to fail. If not, the test is expected to succeed. To XFAIL
446 everywhere just specify ``XFAIL: *``. Here is an example of an ``XFAIL``
453 To make the output more useful, :program:`lit` will scan
454 the lines of the test case for ones that contain a pattern that matches
455 ``PR[0-9]+``. This is the syntax for specifying a PR (Problem Report) number
456 that is related to the test case. The number after "PR" specifies the
457 LLVM bugzilla number. When a PR number is specified, it will be used in
458 the pass/fail reporting. This is useful to quickly get some context when
461 Finally, any line that contains "END." will cause the special
462 interpretation of lines to terminate. This is generally done right after
463 the last RUN: line. This has two side effects:
465 (a) it prevents special interpretation of lines that are part of the test
466 program, not the instructions to the test case, and
468 (b) it speeds things up for really big test cases by avoiding
469 interpretation of the remainder of the file.
471 ``test-suite`` Overview
472 =======================
474 The ``test-suite`` module contains a number of programs that can be
475 compiled and executed. The ``test-suite`` includes reference outputs for
476 all of the programs, so that the output of the executed program can be
477 checked for correctness.
479 ``test-suite`` tests are divided into three types of tests: MultiSource,
480 SingleSource, and External.
482 - ``test-suite/SingleSource``
484 The SingleSource directory contains test programs that are only a
485 single source file in size. These are usually small benchmark
486 programs or small programs that calculate a particular value. Several
487 such programs are grouped together in each directory.
489 - ``test-suite/MultiSource``
491 The MultiSource directory contains subdirectories which contain
492 entire programs with multiple source files. Large benchmarks and
493 whole applications go here.
495 - ``test-suite/External``
497 The External directory contains Makefiles for building code that is
498 external to (i.e., not distributed with) LLVM. The most prominent
499 members of this directory are the SPEC 95 and SPEC 2000 benchmark
500 suites. The ``External`` directory does not contain these actual
501 tests, but only the Makefiles that know how to properly compile these
502 programs from somewhere else. When using ``LNT``, use the
503 ``--test-externals`` option to include these tests in the results.
505 .. _test-suite-quickstart:
507 ``test-suite`` Quickstart
508 -------------------------
510 The modern way of running the ``test-suite`` is focused on testing and
511 benchmarking complete compilers using the
512 `LNT <http://llvm.org/docs/lnt>`_ testing infrastructure.
514 For more information on using LNT to execute the ``test-suite``, please
515 see the `LNT Quickstart <http://llvm.org/docs/lnt/quickstart.html>`_
518 ``test-suite`` Makefiles
519 ------------------------
521 Historically, the ``test-suite`` was executed using a complicated setup
522 of Makefiles. The LNT based approach above is recommended for most
523 users, but there are some testing scenarios which are not supported by
524 the LNT approach. In addition, LNT currently uses the Makefile setup
525 under the covers and so developers who are interested in how LNT works
526 under the hood may want to understand the Makefile based setup.
528 For more information on the ``test-suite`` Makefile setup, please see
529 the :doc:`Test Suite Makefile Guide <TestSuiteMakefileGuide>`.