README file for Singular test-suite
===================================

This is the test-suite for Singular. This directory contains 

regress.cmd	-- perl script which drives tests
Short		-- directory containing "short" tests
Long		-- directory containing "long" tests
Old		-- directory containing "old" (TST) tests

To run Singular test(s):
------------------------
1.) Put the Singular binary in this directory
2.) cd to one of the directories above
3.) run 
     ../regress.cmd [*.tst] [*.lst]
    with the desired tst (i.e., Singular test scripts) or lst (list 
    of tst files) file(s).
4.) For each file xx.tst, 
      ../Singular -tqr12345678 xx.tst > xx.new.tst
      diff xx.res xx.new.res | tee xx.diff
    is run. 
5.) If no diffs were found, xx.diff and xx.new.res are rm'ed and
    xx.res is gzip'ed. Otherwise (i.e., diffs were found), xx.diff and
    xx.new.res are kept, diffs are printed to stdout, and regress.cmd
    exits with exit status != 0.

Do also 
   ../regress.cmd -h
for some more details on regress.cmd.

To add a new test for a library/commando to the test-suite:
-----------------------------------------------------------
* The following files need to be provided:
	short/xx_s.tst : Singular code for short and basic tests 
	long/xx_l.tst : Singular code for long and extended tests
	short/xx_s.res : Result output of xx_s.tst
	long/xx_l.res : Result output of xx_l.tst
  or, alternatively:
        short/xx.tst: Singular code for short tests, only
	short/xx.res : Result output of xx.tst

* xx_s.tst should test the essential functionality of the
  library/commando in a relatively short time (say, in no more than
  30s).

* xx_l.tst should test the functionality of the
  library/commando in detail so that, if possible, all relevant
  cases/results are tested. Nevertheless, such a test should not run
  longer than, say, 10 minutes.

* If useful test do generally execute in a short time, have xx.tst,
  only.

* Rules for providing tst files:
  1.) tst files always start with the following three commandos as
  preamble: 
         LIB "tst.lib";
         tst_init();
	 tst_ignore("CVS ID $Id:$");
  tst_init() writes some general info to stdout (like date,
  uname, hostname, version, etc.). The library tst.lib (appended
  below) provides, among others, the routines tst_init() and
  tst_ignore(). 

  2.) All system-dependent output (like run-times, memory usages,
  pathnames, dates, etc.) must be output by means of the routine
  tst_ignore(...):
  tst_ignore(val [, keyword]): 'val' can have arbitrary type for which
                               a string conversion exists;
                               if present, keyword must be one of the
                               following strings: "time", "memory"
  tst_ignore() outputs 'val' by prepending the following prefix:
  no keyword --       // ignore: 
  "time" keyword --   // ignore: time:
  "memory" keyword -- // ignore: memory:
  which causes automatic tests to ignore these lines when doing a diff 
  on result files. If possible, short tests should not contain
  system-dependent output. 

* Command for generating *.res files: 
  cd <directopry where xx.tst should reside>; ../regress.cmd -g xx.tst