3.3 Testing ns-3

You can run the unit tests of the ns-3 distribution by running the “check” command,

  ./waf check

You should see a report from each unit test that executes indicating that the test has passed.

  ~/repos/ns-3-dev > ./waf check
  Entering directory `/home/craigdo/repos/ns-3-dev/build'
  Compilation finished successfully
  PASS AddressHelper
  PASS Wifi
  PASS DcfManager
  
  ...

  PASS Object
  PASS Ptr
  PASS Callback
  ~/repos/ns-3-dev >

This command is typically run by users to quickly verify that an ns-3 distribution has built correctly.

You can also run our regression test suite to ensure that your distribution and tool chain have produced binaries that generate output that is identical to reference output files stored in a central location. To run the regression tests, you provide Waf with the regression flag.

  ./waf --regression

Waf will verify that the current files in the ns-3 distribution are built and will then look for trace files in the aforementioned centralized location. If your tool chain includes Mercurial, the regression tests will be downloaded from a repository at code.nsnam.org. If you do not have Mercurial installed, the reference traces will be downloaded from a tarball located in the releases section of www.nsnam.org. The particular name of the reference trace location is built from the ns-3 version located in the VERSION file, so don't change that string yourself unless you know what you are doing. (Warning: The ns-3.2 release requires you to be online when you run regression tests because it synchronizes the trace directory with an online repository).

Once the reference traces are downloaded to your local machine, Waf will run a number of tests that generate what we call trace files. The content of these trace files are compared with the reference traces just downloaded. If they are identical, the regression tests report a PASS status. If the regression tests pass, you should see something like,

  ~/repos/ns-3-dev > ./waf --regression
  Entering directory `/home/craigdo/repos/ns-3-dev/build'
  Compilation finished successfully 
  ========== Running Regression Tests ==========
  Synchronizing reference traces using Mercurial.
  Pulling http://code.nsnam.org/ns-3-dev-ref-traces from repo.
  Skipping csma-bridge: Python bindings not available.
  SKIP test-csma-bridge
  PASS test-csma-broadcast
  PASS test-csma-multicast
  PASS test-csma-one-subnet
  PASS test-csma-packet-socket
  PASS test-realtime-udp-echo
  PASS test-simple-error-model
  PASS test-simple-global-routing
  PASS test-simple-point-to-point-olsr
  PASS test-tcp-large-transfer
  PASS test-udp-echo
  PASS test-wifi-wired-bridging

  ~/repos/ns-3-dev >

If a regression tests fails you will see a FAIL indication along with a pointer to the offending trace file and its associated reference trace file along with a suggestion on diff parameters and options in order to see what has gone awry. Python regression tests will be SKIPped if Python bindings are not built.

This document was generated on December, 19 2008 using texi2html 1.78.