Re: create code tests

[Dan Eble]

On Nov 29, 2019, at 16:20, <address@hidden> <address@hidden> wrote:
>  
> I am familiar with the use of makefile. So if you can give me directions with 
> some placeholder commands, or comment at the right place in the makefile (s) 

Well, start at the "test" target in the top-level GNUmakefile.in.  It runs make 
in a number of subdirectories.  I would start by adding something like this 
there:

        $(MAKE) -C input/regression/ly2musicxml out=test local-test

You're going to need to create that ly2musicxml directory (or another name, if 
you have a better idea) and put a GNUmakefile there.  I would copy a 
GNUmakefile from a nearby directory and figure out what needs to be changed and 
what unnecessary things can be removed.

The target "local-test" should run your scripts.  Ideally, this should involve 
rules that regenerate the files only when they are out of date.  You've said 
that expectations can be tested automatically, so I think that, for now, you 
should do that immediately when the output files are generated, and cause make 
to fail if the expectations are not met.  (Later, we might want to allow all 
tests to run and summarize the failures at the end, but this seems simpler.)  
Arrange the makefile so that if make is run again immediately without fixing 
anything, it will fail again in the same way; test this.

Once a test has passed, no subsequent "make test" should rerun it until either 
its prerequisites are modified or "make test-clean" has been run to remove the 
test results.

The "test-clean" target is defined in the top-level GNUmakefile.in.  It runs 
"make clean" in input/regression, and input/regression/GNUmakefile defines 
SUBDIRS.  If you add your new subdirectory to SUBDIRS there and have placed all 
your output files in $(outdir), the existing infrastructure should then remove 
them automatically.
— 
Dan