Text Blame History Raw

Installation instructions

Kyua uses the GNU Automake, GNU Autoconf and GNU Libtool utilities as its build system. These are used only when compiling the application from the source code package. If you want to install Kyua from a binary package, you do not need to read this document.

For the impatient:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
Gain root privileges
# make install
Drop root privileges
$ make installcheck

Or alternatively, install as a regular user into your home directory:

$ ./configure --prefix ~/local
$ make
$ make check
$ make install
$ make installcheck

Dependencies

To build and use Kyua successfully you need:

  • A standards-compliant C and C++ complier.
  • Lutok 0.4.
  • pkg-config.
  • SQLite 3.6.22.

To build the Kyua tests, you optionally need:

  • The Automated Testing Framework (ATF), version 0.15 or greater. This is required if you want to create a distribution file.

If you are building Kyua from the code on the repository, you will also need the following tools:

  • GNU Autoconf.
  • GNU Automake.
  • GNU Libtool.

Regenerating the build system

This is not necessary if you are building from a formal release distribution file.

On the other hand, if you are building Kyua from code extracted from the repository, you must first regenerate the files used by the build system. You will also need to do this if you modify configure.ac, Makefile.am or any of the other build system files. To do this, simply run:

$ autoreconf -i -s

If ATF is installed in a different prefix than Autoconf, you will also need to tell autoreconf where the ATF M4 macros are located. Otherwise, the configure script will be incomplete and will show confusing syntax errors mentioning, for example, ATF_CHECK_SH. To fix this, you have to run autoreconf in the following manner, replacing <atf-prefix> with the appropriate path:

$ autoreconf -i -s -I <atf-prefix>/share/aclocal

General build procedure

To build and install the source package, you must follow these steps:

  1. Configure the sources to adapt to your operating system. This is done using the configure script located on the sources' top directory, and it is usually invoked without arguments unless you want to change the installation prefix. More details on this procedure are given on a later section.

  2. Build the sources to generate the binaries and scripts. Simply run make on the sources' top directory after configuring them. No problems should arise.

  3. Check that the built programs work by running make check. You do not need to be root to do this, but if you are not, some checks will be skipped.

  4. Install the program by running make install. You may need to become root to issue this step.

  5. Issue any manual installation steps that may be required. These are described later in their own section.

  6. Check that the installed programs work by running make installcheck. You do not need to be root to do this, but if you are not, some checks will be skipped.

Configuration flags

The most common, standard flags given to configure are:

  • --prefix=directory: Possible values: Any path. Default: /usr/local.

Specifies where the program (binaries and all associated files) will be installed.

  • --sysconfdir=directory: Possible values: Any path. Default: /usr/local/etc.

Specifies where the installed programs will look for configuration files. /kyua will be appended to the given path unless KYUA_CONFSUBDIR is redefined as explained later on.

  • --help:

Shows information about all available flags and exits immediately, without running any configuration tasks.

The following environment variables are specific to Kyua's configure script:

  • GDB: Possible values: empty, absolute path to GNU GDB. Default: empty.

Specifies the path to the GNU GDB binary that Kyua will use to gather a stack trace of a crashing test program. If empty, the configure script will try to find a suitable binary for you and, if not found, Kyua will attempt to do the search at run time.

  • KYUA_ARCHITECTURE: Possible values: name of a CPU architecture (e.g. x86_64, powerpc). Default: autodetected; typically the output of uname -p.

Specifies the name of the CPU architecture on which Kyua will run. This value is used at run-time to determine tests that are not applicable to the host system.

  • KYUA_CONFSUBDIR: Possible values: empty, a relative path. Default: kyua.

Specifies the subdirectory of the configuration directory (given by the --sysconfdir argument) under which Kyua will search for its configuration files.

  • KYUA_CONFIG_FILE_FOR_CHECK: Possible values: none, an absolute path to an existing file. Default: none.

Specifies the kyua.conf configuration file to use when running any of the check, installcheck or distcheck targets on this source tree. This setting is exclusively used to customize the test runs of Kyua itself and has no effect whatsoever on the built product.

  • KYUA_MACHINE: Possible values: name of a machine type (e.g. amd64, macppc). Default: autodetected; typically the output of uname -m.

Specifies the name of the machine type on which Kyua will run. This value is used at run-time to determine tests that are not applicable to the host system.

  • KYUA_TMPDIR: Possible values: an absolute path to a temporary directory. Default: /tmp.

Specifies the path that Kyua will use to create temporary directories in by default.

The following flags are specific to Kyua's configure script:

  • --enable-developer: Possible values: yes, no. Default: yes in Git HEAD builds; no in formal releases.

Enables several features useful for development, such as the inclusion of debugging symbols in all objects or the enforcement of compilation warnings.

The compiler will be executed with an exhaustive collection of warning detection features regardless of the value of this flag. However, such warnings are only fatal when --enable-developer is yes.

  • --with-atf: Possible values: yes, no, auto. Default: auto.

Enables usage of ATF to build (and later install) the tests.

Setting this to yes causes the configure script to look for ATF unconditionally and abort if not found. Setting this to auto lets configure perform the best decision based on availability of ATF. Setting this to no explicitly disables ATF usage.

When support for tests is enabled, the build process will generate the test programs and will later install them into the tests tree. Running make check or make installcheck from within the source directory will cause these tests to be run with Kyua.

  • --with-doxygen: Possible values: yes, no, auto or a path. Default: auto.

Enables usage of Doxygen to generate documentation for internal APIs. This documentation is not installed and is only provided to help the developer of this package. Therefore, enabling or disabling Doxygen causes absolutely no differences on the files installed by this package.

Setting this to yes causes the configure script to look for Doxygen unconditionally and abort if not found. Setting this to auto lets configure perform the best decision based on availability of Doxygen. Setting this to no explicitly disables Doxygen usage. And, lastly, setting this to a path forces configure to use a specific Doxygen binary, which must exist.

Post-installation steps

Copy the Kyuafile.top file installed in the examples directory to the root of your tests hierarchy and name it Kyuafile. For example:

# cp /usr/local/share/kyua/examples/Kyuafile.top \
     /usr/local/tests/Kyuafile

This will allow you to simply go into /usr/tests and run the tests from there.

Run the tests!

Lastly, after a successful installation, you should periodically run the tests from the final location to ensure things remain stable. Do so as follows:

$ cd /usr/local/kyua && kyua test

The following configuration variables are specific to the 'kyua' test suite and can be given to Kyua with arguments of the form -v test_suites.kyua.<variable_name>=<value>:

  • run_coredump_tests: Possible values: true or false. Default: true.

Avoids running tests that crash subprocesses on purpose to make them dump core. Such tests are particularly slow on macOS, and it is sometimes handy to disable them for quicker development iteration.

If you see any tests fail, do not hesitate to report them in:

https://github.com/jmmv/kyua/issues/

Thank you!