[Rd] Package Unit Testing

[Gregor Gorjanc]

Martin Maechler <maechler <at> stat.math.ethz.ch> writes:

> 
> >>>>> "miguel" == miguel manese <jjonphl <at> gmail.com>
> >>>>>     on Mon, 3 Jul 2006 09:43:12 +0800 writes:
> 
>     miguel> Hello, Do we have like an official unit testing
>     miguel> framework for packages? Like we do R CMD check, and
>     miguel> say the scripts in <pkg>/test are executed? 
> 
> yes.  Just it's  "./tests",  not './test'.
> 
> More specifically, all ./tests/*.R are executed and for those
> foobar.R for which there's a  foobar.Rout.save  file,
> the output is (R CMD Rdiff)ed agains the result of running foobar.R
> 
> All this should be pretty obvious from the manual
> "Writing R Extensions".  
> What was it in there that was not clear enough?

I just tried to find relevant information and searched the whole Writing R
Extensions manual on word test. I have find information Martin stated above,
but failed to find how *.Rout.save should be created. I think that manual 
should say that. Did I miss something obvious? I am also not able to find 
Rdiff COMMAND in man page of R under Debian.

Browsing a bit in sources reveals that *.Rout.save is copy of R session
(starts with "welcome" text and later one code and output is there).
But how does one generate such a file? Additionally, does testing also 
test the first "welcome" text - different version of R haave a bit different
"welcome" text and that should be an error then or ...

Thanks!

Gregor