README.tests

                       README.tests

   Instructions for standalone test regressions of libxml2

libxml2-tests-$version.tar.gz contains 3 standalone C programs as well
as a large amount of tests and results coming from libxml2 itself and
from W3C, NIST, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and James Clark. Each C
program has a different testing purpose:

  runtest.c : runs libxml2 basic internal regression tests
  runsuite.c: runs libxml2 against external regression tests
  testapi.c : exercises the library public entry points
  testchar.c: exercise the check of character ranges and UTF-8 validation

The command:

  make check
or
  make -f Makefile.tests check

should be sufficient on an Unix system to build and exercise the tests
for the version of the library installed on the system. Note however
that there isn't backward compatibility provided so if the installed
version is older than the testsuite one, failing to compile or run the tests
is likely. In any event this won't work with an installed libxml2 older
than 2.6.20.

Building on other platforms should be a matter of compiling the C files
like any other program using libxml2, running the test should be done
simply by launching the resulting executables.

Also note the availability of a "make valgrind" target which will run the
above tests under valgrind to check for memory errors (but this relies
on the availability of the valgrind command and take far more time to
complete).

Daniel Veillard
Mon May  7 2012