MySQL 5.6 has introduced a new unit test framework beside the existing ones.
The googletest test framework is now part of the MySQL test framework for 5.6.
GoogleTest is a C++ Testing Framework that helps write better C++ tests.
I realized that it was used when i tried to buid a MySQL release from sources on a fedora platform. I got the following error :
-- Googletest was not found. gtest-based unit tests will be disabled. You can run cmake . -DENABLE_DOWNLOADS=1 to automatically download and build required components from source.
I tried tu install the package through yum :
$ sudo yum install gtest
But it did not solve the issue. I had to run cmake to allow cmake to download the googletest sources so that it can be compiled within the MySQL distribution.
cmake . -DENABLE_DOWNLOADS=1 ... -- Successfully downloaded http://googletest.googlecode.com/files/gtest-1.5.0.tar.gz to /home/sfrezefo/Downloads/mysql/mysql-5.6.8-rc/source_downloads ...
and then as usual :
make sudo make install
Tests are a very fondamental element of MySQL to validate the compiled software behave correctly.
It is also very fondamental for developpers, contributor or people building MySQL on a specific platform or OS.
This is the only way to validate that there is no regressions on a particular platform.
If you fix a bug or if you develop a new functionality it is fondamental that all the tests go well.
Of course for that to work nicely all test cases have to be fairly released when bugs are fixed. 🙂
For a full description of all the components of The MySQL Test Framework :
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysqltest/2.0/en/