Cram is a functional testing framework for command line applications. Cram tests look like snippets of interactive shell sessions. Cram runs each command and compares the command output in the test with the command's actual output.
Here's a snippet from Cram's own test suite:
The $PYTHON environment variable should be set when running this test from Python. $ [ -n "$PYTHON" ] || PYTHON="`which python`" $ [ -n "$PYTHONPATH" ] || PYTHONPATH="$TESTDIR/.." && export PYTHONPATH $ if [ -n "$COVERAGE" ]; then > coverage erase > alias cram="`which coverage` run --branch -a $TESTDIR/../scripts/cram" > else > alias cram="$PYTHON $TESTDIR/../scripts/cram" > fi $ command -v md5 > /dev/null || alias md5=md5sum Usage: $ cram -h [Uu]sage: cram \[OPTIONS\] TESTS\.\.\. (re) [Oo]ptions: (re) -h, --help show this help message and exit -V, --version show version information and exit -q, --quiet don't print diffs -v, --verbose show filenames and test status -i, --interactive interactively merge changed test output -d, --debug write script output directly to the terminal -y, --yes answer yes to all questions -n, --no answer no to all questions -E, --preserve-env don't reset common environment variables --keep-tmpdir keep temporary directories --shell=PATH shell to use for running tests (default: /bin/sh) --shell-opts=OPTS arguments to invoke shell with --indent=NUM number of spaces to use for indentation (default: 2) --xunit-file=PATH path to write xUnit XML output
The format in a nutshell:
- Cram tests use the
.t
file extension. - Lines beginning with two spaces, a dollar sign, and a space are run in the shell.
- Lines beginning with two spaces, a greater than sign, and a space allow multi-line commands.
- All other lines beginning with two spaces are considered command output.
- Output lines ending with a space and the keyword
(re)
are matched as Perl-compatible regular expressions. - Lines ending with a space and the keyword
(glob)
are matched with a glob-like syntax. The only special characters supported are*
and?
. Both characters can be escaped using\
, and the backslash can be escaped itself. - Output lines ending with either of the above keywords are always first matched literally with actual command output.
- Lines ending with a space and the keyword
(no-eol)
will match actual output that doesn't end in a newline. - Actual output lines containing unprintable characters are escaped
and suffixed with a space and the keyword
(esc)
. Lines matching unprintable output must also contain the keyword. - Anything else is a comment.
- cram-0.7.tar.gz (32 KB, requires Python 2.4-2.7 or Python 3.1 or newer)
Install Cram using make:
$ wget https://bitheap.org/cram/cram-0.7.tar.gz $ tar zxvf cram-0.7.tar.gz $ cd cram-0.7 $ make install
Cram will print a dot for each passing test. If a test fails, a
unified context diff is printed showing the test's expected output
and the actual output. Skipped tests (empty tests and tests that exit
with return code 80
) are marked with s
instead of a dot.
For example, if we run Cram on its own example tests:
.s.! --- examples/fail.t +++ examples/fail.t.err @@ -3,21 +3,22 @@ $ echo 1 1 $ echo 1 - 2 + 1 $ echo 1 1 Invalid regex: $ echo 1 - +++ (re) + 1 Offset regular expression: $ printf 'foo\nbar\nbaz\n\n1\nA\n@\n' foo + bar baz \d (re) [A-Z] (re) - # + @ s. # Ran 6 tests, 2 skipped, 1 failed.
Cram will also write the test with its actual output to
examples/fail.t.err
, allowing you to use other diff tools. This
file is automatically removed the next time the test passes.
When you're first writing a test, you might just write the commands
and run the test to see what happens. If you run Cram with -i
or
--interactive
, you'll be prompted to merge the actual output back
into the test. This makes it easy to quickly prototype new tests.
You can specify a default set of options by creating a .cramrc
file. For example:
[cram] verbose = True indent = 4
Is the same as invoking Cram with --verbose
and --indent=4
.
To change what configuration file Cram loads, you can set the
CRAMRC
environment variable. You can also specify command line
options in the CRAM
environment variable.
Note that the following environment variables are reset before tests are run:
TMPDIR
,TEMP
, andTMP
are set to the test runner'stmp
directory.LANG
,LC_ALL
, andLANGUAGE
are set toC
.TZ
is set toGMT
.COLUMNS
is set to80
. (Note: When using--shell=zsh
, this cannot be reset. It will reflect the actual terminal's width.)CDPATH
andGREP_OPTIONS
are set to an empty string.
Cram also provides the following environment variables to tests:
CRAMTMP
, set to the test runner's temporary directory.TESTDIR
, set to the directory containing the test file.TESTFILE
, set to the basename of the current test file.TESTSHELL
, set to the value specified by--shell
.
Also note that care should be taken with commands that close the test
shell's stdin
. For example, if you're trying to invoke ssh
in
a test, try adding the -n
option to prevent it from closing
stdin
. Similarly, if you invoke a daemon process that inherits
stdout
and fails to close it, it may cause Cram to hang while
waiting for the test shell's stdout
to be fully closed.
Download the official development repository using Mercurial:
hg clone https://bitbucket.org/brodie/cram
Or Git:
git clone https://github.com/brodie/cram.git
Test Cram using Cram:
pip install -r requirements.txt make test
Visit Bitbucket or GitHub if you'd like to fork the project, watch for new changes, or report issues.