Hi Guix,
I have some Guix scripts which take the form of manifests (--manifest=file), packages (--load=file), or are called using "guix repl". Some of these are complex enough to warrant writing unit tests for using srfi-64. However, I'm having some difficulty trying to work out how to run unit tests over procedures that are also used to descirbe manifests and repl scripts, and was looking for some advice - details below!
Normally in vanilla Guile I'd structure my code to call a main procedure using the Guile meta-switch, thus the script could also be imported by a test script using "use-modules" or executed using the meta-switch:
However there is no way of doing this (that I can figure out) when the script is being passed to "guix envrionment" or "guix repl" - meaning the contents of my "main" procedure cannot be bound by a function in the script.
To try to work around this, I separated my scripts into a library module to be unit tested, and a short runner which will call into the library module to generate the manifest, however this approach produces unexpected behaviour - for example if I have a simple gurobi-manifest.scm like so:
(add-to-load-path (dirname (current-filename))) ;; put the script's location on the module path
(use-modules (gurobi-transform-lib)) ;; load the script library
(newline)
(packages->manifest (list my-package-with-my-gurobi
(specification->package "python"))) ;; add python for convenience
The procedure we call to generate the package - my-package-with-my-gurobi, is in a file called gurobi-transform-lib.scm in the same directory as the manifest above.
The initial call to the my-package-with-my-gurobi succeeds (The stdout below shows this) but failure quickly follows, with a subsequent call to the library failing:
$ guix environment -m gurobi-manifest.scm
Setting Gurobi Version: 9.1.2 <- everything looks OK to start with
Setting Test Package: simm
guix environment: error: failed to load 'gurobi-manifest.scm':
ice-9/boot-9.scm:3329:6: In procedure resolve-interface:
no code for module (gurobi-transform-lib)
$
If I cut and paste the library and manifest into the same file everything works as expected.
Thus the best workaround I have at the moment is to have the unit tests run directly from the manifest script, every time the manifest is used, but this is only practical for a very small number of unit tests, and even then it's a bit ugly.
Can anyone suggest a better way of having the unit tests in a separate file which can import procedures used in repl or manifest scripts in such a way that they still work or can be used as repl or manifest scripts themselves?
In the above example, I was hoping to have something like:
guix repl -- gurobi-transform-lib-tests.scm
Any ideas greatfully received!
Cheers,
Phil.