Running Tests

The easiest way to test your PHP build is to run make test from the command line after successfully compiling. This will run the all tests for all enabled functionalities and extensions located in tests folders under the source root directory using the PHP CLI binary.

make test executes the run-tests.php script under the source root (parallel builds will not work). Therefore you can execute the script as follows:

TEST_PHP_EXECUTABLE=sapi/cli/php \
sapi/cli/php [-c /path/to/php.ini] run-tests.php [ext/foo/tests/GLOB]

Which php executable does make test use?

If you are running the run-tests.php script from the command line (as above) you must set the TEST_PHP_EXECUTABLE environment variable to explicitly select the PHP executable that is to be tested, that is, used to run the test scripts.

If you run the tests using make test, the PHP CLI and CGI executables are automatically set for you. make test executes run-tests.php script with the CLI binary. Some test scripts such as session must be executed by CGI SAPI. Therefore, you must build PHP with CGI SAPI to perform all tests.

Note: The PHP binary executing run-tests.php and the PHP binary used for executing test scripts may differ. If you use different PHP binary for executing run-tests.php script, you may get errors.

Which php.ini is used?

make test uses the same php.ini file as it would once installed. The tests have been written to be independent of that php.ini file, so if you find a test that is affected by a setting, please report this, so we can address the issue.

Which test scripts are executed?

The run-tests.php (make test), without any arguments executes all test scripts by extracting all directories named tests from the source root and any subdirectories below. If there are files, which have a phpt extension, run-tests.php looks at the sections in these files, determines whether it should run it, by evaluating the SKIPIF section. If the test is eligible for execution, the FILE section is extracted into a .php file (with the same name besides the extension) and gets executed. When an argument is given or TESTS environment variable is set, the GLOB is expanded by the shell and any file with extension *.phpt is regarded as a test file.

Tester can easily execute tests selectively with as follows:

./sapi/cli/php run-tests.php ext/mbstring/*
./sapi/cli/php run-tests.php ext/mbstring/020.phpt

Test results

Test results are printed to standard output. If there is a failed test, the run-tests.php script saves the result, the expected result and the code executed to the test script directory. For example, if ext/myext/tests/myext.phpt fails to pass, the following files are created:

ext/myext/tests/myext.php - actual test file executed
ext/myext/tests/myext.log - log of test execution (L)
ext/myext/tests/myext.exp - expected output (E)
ext/myext/tests/myext.out - output from test script (O)
ext/myext/tests/myext.diff - diff of .out and .exp (D)

Failed tests are always bugs. Either the test is bugged or not considering factors applying to the tester’s environment, or there is a bug in PHP. If this is a known bug, we strive to provide bug numbers, in either the test name or the file name. You can check the status of such a bug, by going to: https://bugs.php.net/12345 where 12345 is the bug number. For clarity and automated processing, bug numbers are prefixed by a hash sign ‘#’ in test names and/or test cases are named bug12345.phpt.

Note: The files generated by tests can be selected by setting the environment variable TEST_PHP_LOG_FORMAT. For each file you want to be generated use the character in brackets as shown above (default is LEOD). The php file will be generated always.

Note: You can set environment variable TEST_PHP_DETAILED to enable detailed test information.

Automated testing

If you like to keep up to speed, with latest developments and quality assurance, setting the environment variable NO_INTERACTION to 1, will not prompt the tester for any user input.

Normally, the exit status of make test is zero, regardless of the results of independent tests. Set the environment variable REPORT_EXIT_STATUS to 1, and make test will set the exit status (“$?”) to non-zero, when an individual test has failed.

Example script to be run by cron:

========== qa-test.sh =============
#!/bin/sh

CO_DIR=$HOME/cvs/php7
MYMAIL=qa-test@domain.com
TMPDIR=/var/tmp
TODAY=`date +"%Y%m%d"`

# Make sure compilation environment is correct
CONFIGURE_OPTS='--disable-all --enable-cli --with-pcre'
export MAKE=gmake
export CC=gcc

# Set test environment
export NO_INTERACTION=1
export REPORT_EXIT_STATUS=1

cd $CO_DIR
cvs update . >>$TMPDIR/phpqatest.$TODAY
./cvsclean ; ./buildconf ; ./configure $CONFIGURE_OPTS ; $MAKE
$MAKE test >>$TMPDIR/phpqatest.$TODAY 2>&1
if test $? -gt 0
then
        cat $TMPDIR/phpqatest.$TODAY | mail -s"PHP-QA Test Failed for $TODAY" $MYMAIL
fi
========== end of qa-test.sh =============

Note: The exit status of run-tests.php will be 1 when REPORT_EXIT_STATUS is set. The result of make test may be higher than that. At present, gmake 3.79.1 returns 2, so it is advised to test for non-zero, rather then a specific value.

When make test finished running tests, and if there are any failed tests, the script asks to send the logs to the PHP QA mailing list. Please answer y to this question so that we can efficiently process the results, entering your e-mail address (which will not be transmitted in plain text to any list) enables us to ask you some more information if a test failed. Note that this script also uploads php -i output so your hostname may be transmitted.

Specific tests can also be executed, like running tests for a certain extension. To do this you can do like so (for example the standard library):

make test TESTS=ext/standard.

Where TESTS= points to a directory containing .phpt files or a single .phpt file like:

make test TESTS=tests/basic/001.phpt.

You can also pass options directly to the underlying script that runs the test suite (run-tests.phpt) using TESTS=, for example to check for memory leaks using Valgrind, the -m option can be passed along: make test TESTS="-m Zend/". For a full list of options that can be passed along, then run make test TESTS=-h.

Windows users: On Windows the make command is called nmake instead of make. This means that on Windows you will have to run nmake test, to run the test suite.