README.tests

   Instructions for standalone test regressions of libxml2

libxml2-tests-$version.tar.gz contains 3 standalone C programs as well

as a large amount of tests and results coming from libxml2 itself and

from W3C, NIST, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and James Clark. Each C

program has a different testing purpose:

  runtest.c : runs libxml2 basic internal regression tests

  runsuite.c: runs libxml2 against external regression tests

  testapi.c : exercises the library public entry points

  testchar.c: exercise the check of character ranges and UTF-8 validation

The command:

  make check

or

  make -f Makefile.tests check

should be sufficient on an Unix system to build and exercise the tests

for the version of the library installed on the system. Note however

that there isn't backward compatibility provided so if the installed

version is older than the testsuite one, failing to compile or run the tests

is likely. In any event this won't work with an installed libxml2 older

than 2.6.20.

Building on other platforms should be a matter of compiling the C files

like any other program using libxml2, running the test should be done

simply by launching the resulting executables.

Also note the availability of a "make valgrind" target which will run the

above tests under valgrind to check for memory errors (but this relies

on the availability of the valgrind command and take far more time to

complete).

Daniel Veillard

Mon May  7 2012