Notes for ndn-cxx developers

If you are new to the NDN community of software generally, read the Contributor's Guide.

Code style

ndn-cxx code is subject to ndn-cxx code style.

Licensing

Contributions to the library must be licensed under LGPL 3.0 or compatible license. If you are choosing LGPL 3.0, please use the following license boilerplate in all .hpp and .cpp files:

/* -*- Mode:C++; c-file-style:"gnu"; indent-tabs-mode:nil; -*- */
/*
 * Copyright (c) [Year(s)] [Copyright Holder].
 *
 * This file is part of ndn-cxx library (NDN C++ library with eXperimental eXtensions).
 *
 * ndn-cxx library is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
 * terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software
 * Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * ndn-cxx library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
 * WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
 * PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received copies of the GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser
 * General Public License along with ndn-cxx, e.g., in COPYING.md file.  If not, see
 * <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 *
 * See AUTHORS.md for complete list of ndn-cxx authors and contributors.
 ////// [optional part] //////
 *
 * @author Author's Name <email@domain-or-homepage://url>
 * @author Other Author's Name <another.email@domain-or-homepage://url>
 ////// [end of optional part] //////
 */

If you are affiliated to an NSF-supported NDN project institution, please use the NDN Team License Boilerplate.

Running unit tests

To run unit tests, ndn-cxx needs to be configured, build with unit test support, and installed into the configured location. For example:

./waf configure --with-tests
./waf
sudo ./waf install

Note: On Linux platform you also need to run sudo ldconfig to reconfigure dynamic loader run-time bindings. On FreeBSD, use sudo ldconfig -a instead.

The simplest way to run tests, is just to run the compiled binary without any parameters:

./build/unit-tests

Boost.Test framework is very flexible and allows a number of run-time customization of what tests should be run. For example, it is possible to choose to run only a specific test suite, only a specific test case within a suite, or specific test cases within specific test suites:

# Run only Face test suite tests (tests/unit/face.t.cpp)
./build/unit-tests -t TestFace

# Run only test case ExpressInterestData from the same test suite
./build/unit-tests -t TestFace/ExpressInterestData

# Run Basic test case from all test suites
./build/unit-tests -t */Basic

By default, Boost.Test framework will produce verbose output only when a test case fails. If it is desired to see verbose output (result of each test assertion), add -l all option to ./build/unit-tests command. To see test progress, you can use -l test_suite or -p to show progress bar:

# Show report all log messages including the passed test notification
./build/unit-tests -l all

# Show test suite messages
./build/unit-tests -l test_suite

# Show nothing
./build/unit-tests -l nothing

# Show progress bar
./build/unit-tests -p

There are many more command line options available, information about which can be obtained either from the command line using --help switch, or online on Boost.Test library website.

Warning: If you have customized parameters for NDN platform using client.conf in /etc/ndn or /usr/local/etc/ndn (or other @SYSCONFDIR@/etc if it was configured to custom path during ./waf configure), Face-related test cases may fail.