GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool

6.7. Testing

Automake also includes simple support for testing your program. The most simple form of this is the 'TESTS' variable. This variable holds a list of tests that are run when the user runs make check. Each test is built (if necessary) and then executed. For each test, make prints a single line indicating whether the test has passed or failed. Failure means exiting with a non-zero status, with the special exception that an exit status of '77'^[2] means that the test should be ignored. make check also prints a summary showing the number of passes and fails.

^[2] A number chosen arbitrarily by the Automake developers.

Automake also supports the notion of an xfail, which is a test expected to fail. Sometimes this is useful when you want to ...