[docs] explain how to recompile a modified unit test #11219

Sjors commented at 5:12 PM on September 2, 2017: member

It was not obvious to me to run make inside the test directory, especially because make src/test and make src/test/test_bitcoin result in make: Nothing to be done for ....

achow101 commented at 5:40 PM on September 2, 2017: member

Use make -C src/test instead of changing to the test directory and running make.

Sjors commented at 5:42 PM on September 2, 2017: member

@achow101 thanks, I'll update the instruction.

Sjors force-pushed on Sep 2, 2017

fanquake added the label Docs and Output on Sep 2, 2017

laanwj commented at 9:43 PM on September 5, 2017: member

Worded like this it is not clear to me what is the advantage of this, compared to re-running make in the top-level directory. After all, make detects what files are changed and only recompiles those. Or is this when you change a non-test compilation unit and only want to see how it affects the unit test?

Sjors force-pushed on Sep 6, 2017

[docs] explain how to recompile only what bitcoind tests need

`make` rebuilds the entire project. This is quite slow if e.g. you're making changes to one file and only wish to run the bitcoind tests.

This commit adds an instruction to run `make -C src/test` (as opposed to `make src/test` and `make src/test/test_bitcoin`).

478d4fb79c

Sjors force-pushed on Sep 6, 2017

Sjors commented at 8:08 AM on September 6, 2017: member

The latter scenario was the problem I ran into. I pushed a hopefully more clear instruction.

laanwj commented at 10:16 PM on September 6, 2017: member

Looks good to me now. Tested ACK 478d4fb79c878c560ed9179b24b48e884a3b0c13

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in src/test/README.md:11 in 478d4fb79c

   4 | @@ -5,7 +5,10 @@ and tests weren't explicitly disabled.
   5 |  
   6 |  After configuring, they can be run with `make check`.
   7 |  
   8 | -To run the bitcoind tests manually, launch `src/test/test_bitcoin`.
   9 | +To run the bitcoind tests manually, launch `src/test/test_bitcoin`. To recompile
  10 | +after a test file was modified, run `make` and then run the test again. If you
  11 | +modify a non-test file, use `make -C src/test` to recompile only what's needed
  12 | +to run the bitcoind tests.

glowang commented at 3:20 PM on May 18, 2020:

I'm a bit confused by this description...excuse me for asking some beginner questions here...😂 I couldn't find a lot of info on how to use make and -C, but I did find one here. According to this post about phony targets, I derived that the dir after -C flag is the target subdir to build:

Phony targets are also useful in conjunction with recursive invocations of make (see Recursive Use of make). In this situation the makefile will often contain a variable which lists a number of sub-directories to be built. A simplistic way to handle this is to define one rule with a recipe that loops over the sub-directories, like this:

SUBDIRS = foo bar baz

subdirs: for dir in $(SUBDIRS); do
$(MAKE) -C $$dir;
done

If so, make -C src/test is only building the test directory, right? Why is it that if one modify a non-test file, one needs to rebuild the src/test? They should not have to rebuild src/test if they didn't modify any test file?

MarcoFalke commented at 4:20 PM on May 18, 2020:

the test depend on bitcoin core, so if a non-test file (a bitcoin core file) like init.cpp is modified, it will need to be recompiled as well.

init.cpp is then put into libbitcoin_server, which is then linked into test_bitcoin

glowang commented at 3:08 AM on May 19, 2020:

Sounds like either the a test or a non-test file gets changed, bitcoin core (the src dir?) needs to be recompiled. Then when is make -C src/test relevant? Because this command only compiles what is in src/test right, instead of bitcoin core itself? The documentation says If you modify a non-test file, use make -C src/test to recompile only what's needed to run the bitcoind tests, and it seems to imply that when a non-test file gets changed, we only need to compile src/test?

Sjors commented at 8:33 AM on May 19, 2020:

Tests depend on individual source files, not all of bitcoind. So if you're working on src/descriptor.cpp it's faster to do make -C src/test && src/test/test_bitcoin --run_test=descriptor_tests

MarcoFalke commented at 10:29 AM on May 19, 2020:

Tests depend on individual source files, not all of bitcoind

I don't think this is true. Tests depend on all the libraries that bitcoind depends on. The only thing they don't depend on is bitcoind.cpp

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