how to run a test after that another test finished?

[asartori86]

Is there a way to specify to run a test (e.g., diff on generated outputs) after that a test generated those outputs?

My code has a lot of tests that checks the code runs, and in another set of tests the produced output is checked.

We have, e.g., test1 (which runs and produces output files) and test1.compare that compares the output with the reference. This for a lot of tests. Up to now the only solution I came up with is to set the keyword 'is_parallel: falseto all the.comparetests. I don't like this approach since the.compare`s are run only after all the other tests, and in serial.

In CMake you can do this as follows

set_tests_properties(
		"test1.compare" PROPERTIES DEPENDS "test1")

I know I could wrap the run and the diff inside a bash script for example, but I like to have the just_run test such that I can run it with the options provided by meson test like --gdb or --wrapper="valgrind -v"

[jpakkane]

This is not supported. The common approach here is to alter the build setup so that one test both generates the files and checks that the output is correct. Splitting it in two like that seems a bit arbitrary and strange.

[asartori86]

thanks @jpakkane, would you mind to share a snippet of code to show how you would implement that?

[jpakkane]

This has nothing to do with Meson, it is just a question of refactoring your code. In very rough pseudocode you'd go from this:

data_gen_test.c:
int main() {
    return try_to_generate_data(args);
}
data_validat_test.c:
int main() {
    return is_generated_data_valid(args);
}

To a single file with something like:

int main() {
    if(try_to_generate_data(args) != 0) return 1;
    return is_generated_data_valid(args);
}

[asartori86]

thanks @jpakkane, I see your point, but that it is not always viable. In my case, the tests generate thousands of files which are compared with scientifically validated files for each test. A comparison written in python or bash is much more suitable in this scenario.

If you give me a hint where to start I could propose a patch for that

[jpakkane]

If you define the first test after the generator tests (or the first test that does file verification) as is_parallel: false Meson will ensure that all tests prior to it have finished, then runs just that one test on its own and only then proceeds with any further tests. If you can define all data generation tests before any validation tests, that should do what you need out of the box.

[asartori86]

thanks @jpakkane, that makes sense. I have a question on this: is slicing supported?
I thought I could do something as follows

_t = _tests[0]
test(_t,..., is_parallel: false)
foreach _t : _tests[1:]
  test(_t,..., is_parallel: true)
endforeach

but I got

tests/meson.build:67:25: ERROR:  Expecting rbracket got colon.
    foreach _t : _tests[1:]
                         ^

[pgallir]

I think that is not supported because class Parser does not accept column when parsing parenthesis (meson/mesonbuild/mparser.py)

[nirbheek]

Slicing is not supported yet.