Running the Tests¶

Tests are off by default. Enable them at conan install time, build, then drive them through the run_tests family of targets — those targets build every test prerequisite first (including the @sen/client npm install), which a bare ctest invocation does not.

Enable and build¶

conan install . --profile:all=sen_gcc -o "sen/*:with_tests=True" --build=missing
conan build   . --profile:all=sen_gcc
pip install junitparser   # run_tests merges the JUnit reports with it

Run¶

source build/gcc/Release/generators/conanbuild.sh
cmake --build --preset conan-gcc-release --target run_tests

run_tests executes the stable tier in parallel (ctest -LE flaky), then the flaky-labelled tier with --repeat until-pass:5, and merges both JUnit outputs into ctestReport.xml. Narrower lanes exist too: run_unit_tests, run_integration_tests, run_smoke_tests.

Plain ctest --preset conan-gcc-release -R <pattern> is fine for iterating on one suite — just remember it only runs; build the tree (or the relevant lane target) first so test prerequisites exist.

What to expect outside CI¶

A handful of suites are environment-sensitive by design. Seeing them fail on a laptop or in a bare container does not mean the tree is broken:

Suite	Behaviour outside CI
`RestE2EFixture.*`	Flaky-labelled (retried up to 5×). Binds a fixed local port; leftover server processes or parallel runs make it fail.
`CliPackageInit*`	End-to-end scaffolding of `sen package init`; sensitive to the surrounding environment and known to fail in bare containers.
kernel `transport` / `runtime_compatibility` / `type_clash` / `object_sync` / stress suites	Disabled pending SEN-1725. The `object_sync` container flavours additionally need a Docker daemon plus `pip install docker testcontainers`.
`jsonrpc_ts_client_integration` (reconnect scenario)	Known-intermittent: races a server bounce against re-resolution.

The Debug lane¶

SEN_DEBUG_ASSERT and the component-level invariant checks compile only in the Debug configuration — Release and RelWithDebInfo define neither DEBUG nor NDEBUG, so those checks are absent from the default build. When touching lifecycle, subscription, or state-machine code, run the affected component's suite in Debug as well:

conan install . --profile:all=sen_gcc -o "sen/*:with_tests=True" -s build_type=Debug --build=missing
source build/gcc/Debug/generators/conanbuild.sh
cmake --preset conan-gcc-debug
cmake --build --preset conan-gcc-debug --target jsonrpc jsonrpc_test
(cd build/gcc/Debug/bin && ./jsonrpc_test)

Run component test binaries from the build's bin/ directory — several load their component's shared library at runtime and resolve it relative to there.

Writing tests¶

For writing unit tests against Sen's TestKernel / TestComponent, see Unit Testing. The component test directories (components/*/test/) are the templates for suite structure and CMake registration.