nixpkgs/doc/build-helpers/testers.chapter.md

Testers

This chapter describes several testing builders which are available in the testers namespace.

hasPkgConfigModules

[]{#tester-hasPkgConfigModule} Checks whether a package exposes a given list of pkg-config modules. If the moduleNames argument is omitted, hasPkgConfigModules will use meta.pkgConfigModules.

:::{.example #ex-haspkgconfigmodules-defaultvalues}

Check that pkg-config modules are exposed using default values

{
  passthru.tests.pkg-config = testers.hasPkgConfigModules {
    package = finalAttrs.finalPackage;
  };

  meta.pkgConfigModules = [ "libfoo" ];
}

:::

:::{.example #ex-haspkgconfigmodules-explicitmodules}

Check that pkg-config modules are exposed using explicit module names

{
  passthru.tests.pkg-config = testers.hasPkgConfigModules {
    package = finalAttrs.finalPackage;
    moduleNames = [ "libfoo" ];
  };
}

:::

lycheeLinkCheck

Check a packaged static site's links with the lychee package.

You may use Nix to reproducibly build static websites, such as for software documentation. Some packages will install documentation in their out or doc outputs, or maybe you have dedicated package where you've made your static site reproducible by running a generator, such as Hugo or mdBook, in a derivation.

If you have a static site that can be built with Nix, you can use lycheeLinkCheck to check that the hyperlinks in your site are correct, and do so as part of your Nix workflow and CI.

:::{.example #ex-lycheelinkcheck}

Check hyperlinks in the nix documentation

testers.lycheeLinkCheck {
  site = nix.doc + "/share/doc/nix/manual";
}

:::

Return value

This tester produces a package that does not produce useful outputs, but only succeeds if the hyperlinks in your site are correct. The build log will list the broken links.

It has two modes:

• Build the returned derivation; its build process will check that internal hyperlinks are correct. This runs in the sandbox, so it will not check external hyperlinks, but it is quick and reliable.

• Invoke the .online attribute with nix run (experimental). This runs outside the sandbox, and checks that both internal and external hyperlinks are correct. Example:

  nix run nixpkgs#lychee.tests.ok.online
  

Inputs

site (path or derivation) {#tester-lycheeLinkCheck-param-site}

The path to the files to check.

remap (attribe set, optional) {#tester-lycheeLinkCheck-param-remap}

An attribute set where the attribute names are regular expressions. The values should be strings, derivations, or path values.

In the returned check's default configuration, external URLs are only checked when you run the .online attribute.

By adding remappings, you can check offline that URLs to external resources are correct, by providing a stand-in from the file system.

Before checking the existence of a URL, the regular expressions are matched and replaced by their corresponding values.

Example:

{
  "https://nix\\.dev/manual/nix/[a-z0-9.-]*" = "${nix.doc}/share/doc/nix/manual";
  "https://nixos\\.org/manual/nix/(un)?stable" = "${emptyDirectory}/placeholder-to-disallow-old-nix-docs-urls";
}

Store paths in the attribute values are automatically prefixed with file://, because lychee requires this for paths in the file system. If this is a problem, or if you need to control the order in which replacements are performed, use extraConfig.remap instead.

extraConfig (attribute set) {#tester-lycheeLinkCheck-param-extraConfig}

Extra configuration to pass to lychee in its configuration file. It is automatically translated to TOML.

Example: { "include_verbatim" = true; }

lychee (derivation, optional) {#tester-lycheeLinkCheck-param-lychee}

The lychee package to use.

shellcheck

Runs files through shellcheck, a static analysis tool for shell scripts.

:::{.example #ex-shellcheck}

Run testers.shellcheck

A single script

testers.shellcheck {
  name = "shellcheck";
  src = ./script.sh;
}

Multiple files

let
  inherit (lib) fileset;
in
testers.shellcheck {
  name = "shellcheck";
  src = fileset.toSource {
    root = ./.;
    fileset = fileset.unions [
      ./lib.sh
      ./nixbsd-activate
    ];
  };
}

:::

Inputs

[src (path or string)]{#tester-shellcheck-param-src}

The path to the shell script(s) to check. This can be a single file or a directory containing shell files. All files in src will be checked, so you may want to provide fileset-based source instead of a whole directory.

Return value

A derivation that runs shellcheck on the given script(s). The build will fail if shellcheck finds any issues.

testVersion

Checks that the output from running a command contains the specified version string in it as a whole word.

Although simplistic, this test assures that the main program can run. While there's no substitute for a real test case, it does catch dynamic linking errors and such. It also provides some protection against accidentally building the wrong version, for example when using an "old" hash in a fixed-output derivation.

By default, the command to be run will be inferred from the given package attribute: it will check meta.mainProgram first, and fall back to pname or name. The default argument to the command is --version, and the version to be checked will be inferred from the given package attribute as well.

:::{.example #ex-testversion-hello}

Check a program version using all the default values

This example will run the command hello --version, and then check that the version of the hello package is in the output of the command.

{
  passthru.tests.version = testers.testVersion { package = hello; };
}

:::

:::{.example #ex-testversion-different-commandversion}

Check the program version using a specified command and expected version string

This example will run the command leetcode -V, and then check that leetcode 0.4.2 is in the output of the command as a whole word (separated by whitespaces). This means that an output like "leetcode 0.4.21" would fail the tests, and an output like "You're running leetcode 0.4.2" would pass the tests.

A common usage of the version attribute is to specify version = "v${version}".

{
  version = "0.4.2";

  passthru.tests.version = testers.testVersion {
    package = leetcode-cli;
    command = "leetcode -V";
    version = "leetcode ${version}";
  };
}

:::

testBuildFailure

Make sure that a build does not succeed. This is useful for testing testers.

This returns a derivation with an override on the builder, with the following effects:

• Fail the build when the original builder succeeds
• Move $out to $out/result, if it exists (assuming out is the default output)
• Save the build log to $out/testBuildFailure.log (same)

While testBuildFailure is designed to keep changes to the original builder's environment to a minimum, some small changes are inevitable:

• The file $TMPDIR/testBuildFailure.log is present. It should not be deleted.
• stdout and stderr are a pipe instead of a tty. This could be improved.
• One or two extra processes are present in the sandbox during the original builder's execution.
• The derivation and output hashes are different, but not unusual.
• The derivation includes a dependency on buildPackages.bash and expect-failure.sh, which is built to include a transitive dependency on buildPackages.coreutils and possibly more. These are not added to PATH or any other environment variable, so they should be hard to observe.

:::{.example #ex-testBuildFailure-showingenvironmentchanges}

Check that a build fails, and verify the changes made during build

runCommand "example" {
  failed = testers.testBuildFailure (runCommand "fail" {} ''
    echo ok-ish >$out
    echo failing though
    exit 3
  '');
} ''
  grep -F 'ok-ish' $failed/result
  grep -F 'failing though' $failed/testBuildFailure.log
  [[ 3 = $(cat $failed/testBuildFailure.exit) ]]
  touch $out
''

:::

testEqualContents

Check that two paths have the same contents.

:::{.example #ex-testEqualContents-toyexample}

Check that two paths have the same contents

testers.testEqualContents {
  assertion = "sed -e performs replacement";
  expected = writeText "expected" ''
    foo baz baz
  '';
  actual = runCommand "actual" {
    # not really necessary for a package that's in stdenv
    nativeBuildInputs = [ gnused ];
    base = writeText "base" ''
      foo bar baz
    '';
  } ''
    sed -e 's/bar/baz/g' $base >$out
  '';
}

:::

testEqualDerivation

Checks that two packages produce the exact same build instructions.

This can be used to make sure that a certain difference of configuration, such as the presence of an overlay does not cause a cache miss.

When the derivations are equal, the return value is an empty file. Otherwise, the build log explains the difference via nix-diff.

:::{.example #ex-testEqualDerivation-hello}

Check that two packages produce the same derivation

testers.testEqualDerivation
  "The hello package must stay the same when enabling checks."
  hello
  (hello.overrideAttrs(o: { doCheck = true; }))

:::

invalidateFetcherByDrvHash

Use the derivation hash to invalidate the output via name, for testing.

Type: (a@{ name, ... } -> Derivation) -> a -> Derivation

Normally, fixed output derivations can and should be cached by their output hash only, but for testing we want to re-fetch everytime the fetcher changes.

Changes to the fetcher become apparent in the drvPath, which is a hash of how to fetch, rather than a fixed store path. By inserting this hash into the name, we can make sure to re-run the fetcher every time the fetcher changes.

This relies on the assumption that Nix isn't clever enough to reuse its database of local store contents to optimize fetching.

You might notice that the "salted" name derives from the normal invocation, not the final derivation. invalidateFetcherByDrvHash has to invoke the fetcher function twice: once to get a derivation hash, and again to produce the final fixed output derivation.

:::{.example #ex-invalidateFetcherByDrvHash-nix}

Prevent nix from reusing the output of a fetcher

{
  tests.fetchgit = testers.invalidateFetcherByDrvHash fetchgit {
    name = "nix-source";
    url = "https://github.com/NixOS/nix";
    rev = "9d9dbe6ed05854e03811c361a3380e09183f4f4a";
    hash = "sha256-7DszvbCNTjpzGRmpIVAWXk20P0/XTrWZ79KSOGLrUWY=";
  };
}

:::

runNixOSTest

A helper function that behaves exactly like the NixOS runTest, except it also assigns this Nixpkgs package set as the pkgs of the test and makes the nixpkgs.* options read-only.

If your test is part of the Nixpkgs repository, or if you need a more general entrypoint, see "Calling a test" in the NixOS manual.

:::{.example #ex-runNixOSTest-hello}

Run a NixOS test using runNixOSTest

pkgs.testers.runNixOSTest ({ lib, ... }: {
  name = "hello";
  nodes.machine = { pkgs, ... }: {
    environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.hello ];
  };
  testScript = ''
    machine.succeed("hello")
  '';
})

:::

nixosTest

Run a NixOS VM network test using this evaluation of Nixpkgs.

NOTE: This function is primarily for external use. NixOS itself uses make-test-python.nix directly. Packages defined in Nixpkgs reuse NixOS tests via nixosTests, plural.

It is mostly equivalent to the function import ./make-test-python.nix from the NixOS manual, except that the current application of Nixpkgs (pkgs) will be used, instead of letting NixOS invoke Nixpkgs anew.

If a test machine needs to set NixOS options under nixpkgs, it must set only the nixpkgs.pkgs option.

Parameter

A NixOS VM test network, or path to it. Example:

{
  name = "my-test";
  nodes = {
    machine1 = { lib, pkgs, nodes, ... }: {
      environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.hello ];
      services.foo.enable = true;
    };
    # machine2 = ...;
  };
  testScript = ''
    start_all()
    machine1.wait_for_unit("foo.service")
    machine1.succeed("hello | foo-send")
  '';
}

Result

A derivation that runs the VM test.

Notable attributes:

• nodes: the evaluated NixOS configurations. Useful for debugging and exploring the configuration.

• driverInteractive: a script that launches an interactive Python session in the context of the testScript.