Notes for NFD developers

Requirements

Include the following license boilerplate into all .hpp and .cpp files:

/* -*- Mode:C++; c-file-style:"gnu"; indent-tabs-mode:nil; -*- */
/**
 * Copyright (c) 2014,  Regents of the University of California,
 *                      Arizona Board of Regents,
 *                      Colorado State University,
 *                      University Pierre & Marie Curie, Sorbonne University,
 *                      Washington University in St. Louis,
 *                      Beijing Institute of Technology,
 *                      The University of Memphis
 *
 * This file is part of NFD (Named Data Networking Forwarding Daemon).
 * See AUTHORS.md for complete list of NFD authors and contributors.
 *
 * NFD is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms
 * of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation,
 * either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * NFD 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 General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
 * NFD, e.g., in COPYING.md file.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 ////// [optional part] //////
 *
 * \author Author's Name <email@domain>
 * \author Other Author's Name <another.email@domain>
 ////// [end of optional part] //////
 */

Recommendations

NFD code is subject to NFD code style.

Running unit-tests

To run unit tests, NFD needs to be configured and build with unit test support:

./waf configure --with-tests
./waf

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

# Run core tests
./build/unit-tests-core

# Run  NFD daemon tests
./build/unit-tests-daemon

# Run NFD RIB management tests
./build/unit-tests-rib

However, 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 TCP Face test suite of NFD daemon tests (see tests/daemon/face/tcp.cpp)
./build/unit-tests-daemon -t FaceTcp

# Run only test case EndToEnd4 from the same test suite
./build/unit-tests-daemon -t FaceTcp/EndToEnd4

# Run Basic test case from all core test suites
./build/unit-tests-core -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-daemon -l all

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

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

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