dejaGnu 1.4.4 review

DejaGnu is a framework for testing other programs

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 1055K Developer: Rob Savoye

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DejaGnu is a framework for testing other programs. dejaGnu's purpose is to provide a single front end for all tests. Think of it as a custom library of Tcl procedures crafted to support writing a test harness.

A test harness is the testing infrastructure that is created to support a specific program or tool. Each program can have multiple testsuites, all supported by a single test harness. DejaGnu is written in Expect, which in turn uses Tcl -- Tool command language.

Here are some key features of "dejaGnu":
The flexibility and consistency of the DejaGnu framework make it easy to write tests for any program, with either batch oriented, or interactive programs.
DejaGnu provides a layer of abstraction which allows you to write tests that are portable to any host or target where a program must be tested. For instance, a test for GDB can run from any supported host system on any supported target system. DejaGnu runs tests on many single board computers, whose operating software ranges from a simple boot monitor to a real-time OS.
All tests have the same output format. This makes it easy to integrate testing into other software development processes. DejaGnu's output is designed to be parsed by other filtering script and it is also human readable.
Using Tcl and Expect, it's easy to create wrappers for existing testsuites. By incorporating existing tests under DejaGnu, it's easier to have a single set of report analyse programs..

Running tests requires two things: the testing framework and the testsuites themselves. Tests are usually written in Expect using Tcl, but you can also use a Tcl script to run a testsuite that is not based on Expect. Expect script filenames conventionally use .exp as a suffix; for example, the main implementation of the DejaGnu test driver is in the file runtest.exp.)