Add documentation

Explain the goals of metatests, how to write them, and how to read their
output.

Signed-off-by: Gilles Peskine <Gilles.Peskine@arm.com>
This commit is contained in:
Gilles Peskine 2023-11-10 15:36:15 +01:00
parent ccb121500d
commit cce0012463
2 changed files with 56 additions and 0 deletions

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@ -1,6 +1,24 @@
/** \file metatest.c
*
* \brief Test features of the test framework.
*
* When you run this program, it runs a single "meta-test". A meta-test
* performs an operation which should be caught as a failure by our
* test framework. The meta-test passes if this program calls `exit` with
* a nonzero status, or aborts, or is terminated by a signal, or if the
* framework running the program considers the run an error (this happens
* with Valgrind for a memory leak). The non-success of the meta-test
* program means that the test failure has been caught correctly.
*
* Some failures are purely functional: the logic of the code causes the
* test result to be set to FAIL. Other failures come from extra
* instrumentation which is not present in a normal build; for example,
* Asan or Valgrind to detect memory leaks. This is reflected by the
* "platform" associated with each meta-test.
*
* Use the companion script `tests/scripts/run-metatests.sh` to run all
* the meta-tests for a given platform and validate that they trigger a
* detected failure as expected.
*/
/*
@ -197,11 +215,41 @@ void mutex_leak(const char *name)
/****************************************************************/
typedef struct {
/** Command line argument that will trigger that metatest.
*
* Conventionally matches "[a-z0-9_]+". */
const char *name;
/** Platform under which that metatest is valid.
*
* - "any": should work anywhere.
* - "asan": triggers ASan (Address Sanitizer).
* - "msan": triggers MSan (Memory Sanitizer).
* - "pthread": requires MBEDTLS_THREADING_PTHREAD and MBEDTLS_TEST_HOOKS.
*/
const char *platform;
/** Function that performs the metatest.
*
* The function receives the name as an argument. This allows using the
* same function to perform multiple variants of a test based on the name.
*
* When executed on a conforming platform, the function is expected to
* either cause a test failure (mbedtls_test_fail()), or cause the
* program to abort in some way (e.g. by causing a segfault or by
* triggering a sanitizer).
*
* When executed on a non-conforming platform, the function may return
* normally or may have unpredictable behavior.
*/
void (*entry_point)(const char *name);
} metatest_t;
/* The list of availble meta-tests. Remember to register new functions here!
*
* Note that we always compile all the functions, so that `metatest --list`
* will always list all the available meta-tests.
*/
metatest_t metatests[] = {
{ "test_fail", "any", meta_test_fail },
{ "null_dereference", "any", null_pointer_dereference },

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@ -6,6 +6,14 @@ Usage: $0 [OPTION] [PLATFORM]...
Run all the metatests whose platform matches any of the given PLATFORM.
A PLATFORM can contain shell wildcards.
Expected output: a lot of scary-looking error messages, since each
metatest is expected to report a failure. The final line should be
"Ran N metatests, all good."
If something goes wrong: the final line should be
"Ran N metatests, X unexpected successes". Look for "Unexpected success"
in the logs above.
-l List the available metatests, don't run them.
EOF
}