flag.Parse in tests

[jonathan...@gmail.com]

I can't seem to find this documented or examples shown.

When using a flag passed into a test when should flag.Parse be called?

I tried not calling it and the flag doesn't come through.

Calling it in init() seems to work, as does in the test case, as does in a "func TestMain()".

[Ian Lance Taylor]

The testing package calls flag.Parse itself. I don't know why you
would not see the flag. How are you defining the flag?

Ian

[jonathan...@gmail.com]

within func init() { }

I am doing flag.StringVar(&someVar, "someName", "", "desc")

and within the pkg dir doing go test -v -someName boo

[Rob Pike]

The flag is not known to go test; you should see a usage message that makes that clearer. You need to build the binary first, and then run the binary with the flag:

$ go test -c 

$ foo.test -someName boo

-rob

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[jonathan...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the help Rob. Narrowed it down with a little test:

package a

import (

    "flag"

    "fmt"

    "os"

    "testing"

)

var theflag string

func init() {

    flag.StringVar(&theflag, "theflag", "", "desc")

}

func TestMain(m *testing.M) {

    fmt.Printf("'%v'\n", theflag)

    os.Exit(m.Run())

}

func TestFoo(t *testing.T) {

    fmt.Printf("'%v'\n", theflag)

}

Within TestMain it prints blank but prints correctly in the TestFoo, is this expected?

If TestMain's utility is for setting up test data etc, then having the flags available is very useful.

If I call Parse within TestMain it does work correctly which seems analogous to the normal func main, so I am guessing this is the intended functionality. Good thing for future docs :)

Thanks! 

[Rob Pike]

I missed that you were using TestMain. As the documentation for package testing says,

A simple implementation of TestMain is:

    func TestMain(m *testing.M) {

    flag.Parse()

    os.Exit(m.Run())

    }

You need to call flag.Parse in TestMain.

In other words, it's already in the docs.

-rob

[jonathan...@gmail.com]

Is this the upcoming 1.5 docs?

I see:

The minimal implementation of TestMain is: 

func TestMain(m *testing.M) { os.Exit(m.Run()) } 

By the way the 1.5 change log looks fantastic ! 

[Rob Pike]

Yes, looks like it's in 1.5

-rob