,  ,  ,_     _,  , ,   ___, ,  , 
  |  |  |_)   /    |_|, ' |   |\ | 
 '\__| '| \  '\_  '| |   _|_, |'\| 
`  '  `    `  ' `  '     '  ` 

Urchin is an experimental language-agnostic lightweight cross-platform test skeleton written in POSIX-compliant shell, originally designed for test-driven server deployment at ScraperWiki.

Install

Download Urchin like so (as root)

wget -O /usr/local/bin https://raw.github.com/scraperwiki/urchin/master/urchin
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/urchin

Now you can run it.

urchin

Writing tests

Make a root directory for your tests. Inside it, put executable files that exit 0 on success and something else on fail. Non-executable files and hidden files (dotfiles) are ignored, so you can store fixtures right next to your tests. Run urchin from inside the tests directory.

More about writing tests

Tests are organized recursively in directories, where the names of the files and directories have special meanings.

tests/
  setup
  bar/
    setup
    test_that_something_works
    teardown
  baz/
    jack-in-the-box/
      setup
      test_that_something_works
      teardown
    cat-in-the-box/
      fixtures/
        thingy.pdf
      test_thingy
  teardown

Directories are processed in a depth-first order. When a particular directory is processed, setup is sourced before everything else in the directory, including subdirectories. Export variables from the setup function to make them available to other files in the same directory.

teardown is run after everything else in the directory.

Files are only run if they are executable, and files beginning with . are ignored. Thus, fixtures and libraries can be included sloppily within the test directory tree. The test passes if the file exits 0; otherwise, it fails.