1 Major changes in ATF releases
3 By Julio Merino, The NetBSD Foundation
7 1. Changes in version 0.7
9 2. Changes in version 0.6
11 3. Changes in version 0.5
13 4. Changes in version 0.4
15 5. Changes in version 0.3
17 6. Changes in version 0.2
19 7. Changes in version 0.1
21 Changes in version 0.7
23 Experimental version released on December 22nd, 2009.
25 * Added build-time checks to atf-c and atf-c++. A binding for atf-sh
28 * Migrated all build-time checks for header files to proper ATF tests.
29 This demonstrates the use of the new feature described above.
31 * Added an internal API for child process management.
33 * Converted all plain-text distribution documents to a Docbook canonical
34 version, and include pre-generated plain text and HTML copies in the
37 * Simplified the contents of the Makefile.am by regenerating it from a
38 canonical Makefile.am.m4 source. As a side-effect, some dependency
39 specifications were fixed.
41 * Migrated all checks from the check target to installcheck, as these
42 require ATF to be installed.
44 * Fixed sign comparison mismatches triggered by the now-enabled
47 * Fixed many memory and object leaks.
49 Changes in version 0.6
51 Experimental version released on January 18th, 2009.
53 * Make atf-exec be able to kill its child process after a certain period
54 of time; this is controlled through the new -t option.
56 * Change atf-sh to use atf-exec's -t option to control the test case's
57 timeouts, instead of doing it internally. Same behavior as before, but
60 * atf-exec's -g option and atf-killpg are gone due to the previous
63 * Added the atf-check(1) tool, a program that executes a given command
64 and checks its exit code against a known value and allows the
65 management of stdout and stderr in multiple ways. This replaces the
66 previous atf_check function in the atf-sh library and exposes this
67 functionality to both atf-c and atf-c++.
69 * Added the ATF_REQUIRE family of macros to the C interface. These help
70 in checking for fatal test conditions. The old ATF_CHECK macros now
71 perform non-fatal checks only. I.e. by using ATF_CHECK, the test case
72 can now continue its execution and the failures will not be reported
73 until the end of the whole run.
75 * Extended the amount of ATF_CHECK_* C macros with new ones to provide
76 more features to the developer. These also have their corresponding
77 counterparts in the ATF_REQUIRE_* family. The new macros (listing the
78 suffixes only) are: _EQ (replaces _EQUAL), _EQ_MSG, _STREQ and
81 Changes in version 0.5
83 Experimental version released on May 1st, 2008.
85 * Clauses 3 and 4 of the BSD license used by the project were dropped.
86 All the code is now under a 2-clause BSD license compatible with the
87 GNU General Public License (GPL).
89 * Added a C-only binding so that binary test programs do not need to be
90 tied to C++ at all. This binding is now known as the atf-c library.
92 * Renamed the C++ binding to atf-c++ for consistency with the new atf-c.
94 * Renamed the POSIX shell binding to atf-sh for consistency with the new
97 * Added a -w flag to test programs through which it is possible to
98 specify the work directory to be used. This was possible in prior
99 releases by defining the workdir configuration variable (-v
100 workdir=...), but was a conceptually incorrect mechanism.
102 * Test programs now preserve the execution order of test cases when they
103 are given in the command line. Even those mentioned more than once are
104 executed multiple times to comply with the user's requests.
106 Changes in version 0.4
108 Experimental version released on February 4th, 2008.
110 * Added two new manual pages, atf-c++-api and atf-sh-api, describing the
111 C++ and POSIX shell interfaces used to write test programs.
113 * Added a pkg-config file, useful to get the flags to build against the
114 C++ library or to easily detect the presence of ATF.
116 * Added a way for test cases to require a specific architecture and/or
117 machine type through the new 'require.arch' and 'require.machine'
118 meta-data properties, respectively.
120 * Added the 'timeout' property to test cases, useful to set an
121 upper-bound limit for the test's run time and thus prevent global test
122 program stalls due to the test case's misbehavior.
124 * Added the atf-exec(1) internal utility, used to execute a command
125 after changing the process group it belongs to.
127 * Added the atf-killpg(1) internal utility, used to kill process groups.
129 * Multiple portability fixes. Of special interest, full support for
130 SunOS (Solaris Express Developer Edition 2007/09) using the Sun Studio
133 * Fixed a serious bug that prevented atf-run(1) from working at all
134 under Fedora 8 x86_64. Due to the nature of the bug, other platforms
135 were likely affected too.
137 Changes in version 0.3
139 Experimental version released on November 11th, 2007.
141 * Added XML output support to atf-report. This is accompanied by a DTD
142 for the format's structure and sample XSLT/CSS files to post-process
143 this output and convert it to a plain HTML report.
145 * Changed atf-run to add system information to the report it generates.
146 This is currently used by atf-report's XML output only, and is later
147 printed in the HTML reports in a nice and useful summary table. The
148 user and system administrator are allowed to tune this feature by
151 * Removed the test cases' 'isolated' property. This was intended to
152 avoid touching the file system at all when running the related test
153 case, but this has not been true for a long while: some control files
154 are unconditionally required for several purposes, and we cannot
155 easily get rid of them. This way we remove several critical and
156 delicate pieces of code.
158 * Improved atf-report's CSV output format to include information about
161 * Fixed the tests that used atf-compile to not require this tool as a
162 helper. Avoids systems without build-time utilities to skip many tests
163 that could otherwise be run. (E.g. NetBSD without the comp.tgz set
166 * Many general cleanups: Fixed many pieces of code marked as ugly and/or
169 Changes in version 0.2
171 Experimental version released on September 20th, 2007.
173 * Test cases now get a known umask on entry.
175 * atf-run now detects many unexpected failures caused by test programs
176 and reports them as bogus tests. atf-report is able to handle these
177 new errors and nicely reports them to the user.
179 * All the data formats read and written by the tools have been
180 documented and cleaned up. These include those grammars that define
181 how the different components communicate with each other as well as
182 the format of files written by the developers and users: the Atffiles
183 and the configuration files.
185 * Added the atf-version tool, a utility that displays information about
186 the currently installed version of ATF.
188 * Test cases can now define an optional cleanup routine to undo their
189 actions regardless of their exit status.
191 * atf-report now summarizes the list of failed (bogus) test programs
192 when using the ticker output format.
194 * Test programs now capture some termination signals and clean up any
195 temporary files before exiting the program.
197 * Multiple bug fixes and improvements all around.
199 Changes in version 0.1
201 Experimental version released on August 20th, 2007.
203 * First public version. This was released coinciding with the end of the
204 Google Summer of Code 2007 program.