Xlib and X Protocol Test Suite
Release 1.2
Release Notes for the X Test Suite
July 1992
Copyright (c) 1991, 1992 by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and UniSoft Group Limited
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this
software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby
granted without fee, provided that the above copyright
notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright
notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
documentation, and that the names of MIT and UniSoft not be
used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution
of the software without specific, written prior permission.
MIT and UniSoft make no representations about the
suitability of this software for any purpose. It is
provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
Release Notes for the X Test Suite
Release Notes for the X Test Suite
1. Acknowledgements
The X Test Suite was produced by UniSoft Group Limited under
contract to the MIT X Consortium.
UniSoft Group Limited,
Spa House,
Chapel Place,
Rivington Street,
LONDON EC2A 3DQ
2. Introduction
This release of the X Test Suite tests sections 2 to 10 of
the Xlib: C Language X Interface (MIT X Consortium Standard
- X Version 11, Release 4)1. It also tests parts of the
X Window System Protocol (MIT X Consortium Standard -
X Version 11) where these cannot be inferred from tests at
the Xlib level.
The X Test Suite may be used to test later versions of X11.
The test suite is known to build correctly using the X11R5
Xlib distributed by MIT. However, only R4 functionality is
tested; new interfaces and functionality introduced in later
releases are not tested.
3. Installation
The distribution normally comes a single tar file, either on
tape or across a network. Create a directory to hold the
distribution, cd to it, and untar everything from that
directory. For example:
mkdir sourcedir
cd sourcedir
tar xfp tar-file-or-tape-device
__________
1. The X Window System is a trademark of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
X Window System Version 11 Release 4 is abbreviated to
X11R4 in this document.
X Window System Version 11 Release 5 is abbreviated to
X11R5 in this document.
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Release Notes for the X Test Suite
If you have obtained compressed and split tar file over the
network, then the sequence might be:
cat xtest.?? | uncompress | (cd sourcedir; tar xfp -)
The sourcedir directory you choose can be anywhere in any of
your filesystems that is convenient to you.
The X Test Suite requires about 10Mb of disk space to unpack
the sources, and perhaps 50-100Mb of disk space to build
space-saving executable files (dependent on machine
architecture). If you choose to build standard executable
files you will require perhaps 100-250Mb of disk space. See
the User Guide for build instructions.
4. Documentation
The following documentation is provided for the X Test
Suite. To format the .mm files, you need the utilities
soelim, tbl, and nroff/troff with the mm macros. The file
xtest/doc/Makefile contains rules showing how to use these
utilities to format and print the documents.
1. The User Guide gives enough information to enable an
experienced test suite user, (not necessarily familiar
with the X Window System) to configure, build and
execute the X Test Suite, and analyse the results
produced.
You can find the source of the User Guide in the file
xtest/doc/userguide.mm, and in PostScript form in file
xtest/doc/userguide.ps.
2. The Programmers Guide gives enough information to
enable an experienced programmer familiar with the
X Window System to modify or extend the X Test Suite.
You can find the source of the Programmers Guide in
the file xtest/doc/progguide.mm, and in PostScript
form in file xtest/doc/progguide.ps.
3. A paper distributed in the old T7 X test suite, "An
Approach to Testing X Window System Servers at a
Protocol Level", is included in this release. This is
a technical paper which defines in outline terms the
areas of the X Window System server which should be
tested at the X Protocol level rather than the Xlib
level.
The approach recommended in this paper, and adopted in
the design of the T7 X test suite, has been maintained
in this X Test Suite. The paper explains the choice
of test cases and division of tests between the
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Release Notes for the X Test Suite
X Protocol tests and Xlib tests. This paper has been
left "as is"; as a result, some sections of this paper
are out of date in that they refer to development
schedules for a previous software development project.
You can find the source of this paper in the file
xtest/doc/paper.mm.
5. Portability
The main portability limitations occur in the TET which is
described further below. This is because the TET was
originally developed to run on systems which are POSIX.12
compliant.
To enable the X Test Suite to build easily on BSD4.2
systems, a portability library has been developed which
contains POSIX.1 functions not present on vanilla BSD4.2
systems. The contents and use of this library are described
further in the User Guide. Beyond this, non-POSIX systems
may require some porting effort dependent on the number of
commonly supported functions which are absent in a
particular implementation.
Maintenance and enhancement of the portability library is a
low priority for the MIT X Consortium.
It should be possible to build and run this test suite
against any R4 or later Xlib and X server. However, to
build and execute the complete set of tests, your X server
must support the XTEST protocol extension and you need the
library interface to this extension. This extension is not
part of R4 or R5; it was developed after R5 was released.
The extension is not included in this distribution, and had
only been released to members of the X Consortium at the
time this distribution was released. It is expected that
the extension will be released to the public sometime in the
future (before R6).
It is also possible to configure the test suite to use an
Xlib internal function to obtain raw connections to the X
server. The interface to this function was revised after R5
was released in order to provide an adequate interface for
this test suite. The Xlib changes for this had only been
released to members of the X Consortium at the time this
distribution was released. It is expected that these
__________
2. IEEE Std 1003.1-1990, Portable Operating System
Interface for Computer Environments
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Release Notes for the X Test Suite
changes will be released to the public sometime in the
future (before R6).
6. Status of the Test Environment Toolkit (TET)
Included in this release is a version of the "Test
Environment Toolkit" (TET). This is required to build and
execute the X Test Suite. The "Test Environment Toolkit" is
a software tool developed by X/Open, UNIX International, and
the Open Software Foundation.
1. The X Test Suite includes a copy of TET version 1.9
with a small number of changes described below.
2. The supplied version of TET includes fixes to several
bugs reported since the TET 1.9 release.
3. The Makefiles supplied with TET 1.9 have been modified
slightly to use the build configuration scheme used by
the X Test Suite. This reduces the need to edit
Makefiles to modify configuration variables when
building the TET.
4. You should only refer to the instructions in the User
Guide for the X Test Suite for details of installation
of the TET.
For more complete information on the features of the
TET, you can format and print the on-line
documentation for the TET (see "TET Documentation").
5. It is intended that the X Test Suite should work in
conjunction with future versions of the TET later than
1.9.
You can obtain the latest released version by sending
electronic mail to infoserver@xopen.co.uk. A message
body of
request: tet
topic: index
request: end
will obtain the index of files available for the TET.
7. TET Documentation
You need only refer to the instructions in the User Guide
for the X Test Suite for details of installation and usage
of the TET.
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Release Notes for the X Test Suite
For more background information on the features and scope of
the TET, you can format and print the following items of
documentation which are part of the TET.
Any conflict between this documentation and the User Guide
for the X Test Suite is unintentional. You should assume the
User Guide is correct in case of conflict, because it has
been checked against the X Test Suite.
1. The release note for TET 1.9 is supplied in the file
tet/doc/posix_c/rel_note.mm, and in PostScript form in
file tet/doc/posix_c/rel_note.ps.
To format rel_note.mm, you require the utilities tbl,
and nroff/troff with the mm macros.
2. A manual page for the tcc utility is provided in file
tet/doc/posix_c/tcc.1.
To format the man page, you require the utility
nroff/troff with the man macros.
8. Filing bug reports
If you find a reproducible bug in the software or
documentation, please send a bug report to MIT using the
form in the file bug-report and the destination address:
xbugs@expo.lcs.mit.edu
Please try to provide all of the information requested on
the form if it is applicable; the little extra time you
spend on the report will make it much easier for us to
reproduce, find, and fix the bug. Receipt of bug reports is
generally acknowledged, but sometimes it can be delayed by a
few weeks.
This test suite will report numerous bugs in the public R4
and R5 distributions from MIT, and in some cases will cause
the X server to crash. In general, it is not necessary to
report bugs in the MIT Xlib and X server software found by
running this test suite to MIT. The test suite is used
extensively at the X Consortium, and at the time of this
release nearly all bugs reported by this test suite when
running on monochrome and 8-bit color systems (as well as
some 12-bit and 24-bit systems) have been corrected in the
sources maintained at MIT. However, if you discover bugs
that you think will not show up on systems tested at MIT,
feel free to report them.
Bugs in TET/tcc software and documentation should not be
reported to MIT. Send TET/tcc bug reports to
tet_support@xopen.co.uk.
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Release Notes for the X Test Suite
9. Setting up your X server
Your attention is drawn to section 7.1 of the User Guide
entitled "Setting up your X server". You should follow the
guidelines in section 7.1.1 to obtain reliable, repeatable
results against your X server, when running formal
verification tests.
It is also important to ensure that your X server is running
no other clients before starting formal verification tests.
This is because some test programs (for example, those which
enable access control) may interfere with later tests unless
the X server resets in between. To ensure the X server
resets after each test program, make sure you are not
running any other clients at the time.
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