Testing

linscp’s tests run through CTest, the same way on a laptop and in CI. They start their own servers on 127.0.0.1, so you need no outside accounts and nothing listens beyond loopback.

Run the suite

After a Linux build:

ctest --test-dir build/linux

Add -j8 to run tests in parallel, -R qt_gui to run only the tests whose names match, and --output-on-failure to see why a test failed. A test that cannot run here, for example because a server program is missing, is reported as skipped rather than failed.

For the Windows build, the same command runs every test under Wine:

ctest --test-dir build/win

What is covered

Group	Examples	What it checks
Runtime and platform	unicodestring, datetime, win32_on_posix	The VCL replacement and the Win32 layer behave as the core expects
Core	core_init, ini_sites, sftp_session	The core starts, reads stored sites and runs real sessions
Console client	cli_session, protocols, keepuptodate	linscp-cli runs scripts over SFTP, SCP, FTP, FTPS, WebDAV and S3
Golden output	golden	linscp’s XML logs match those written by real WinSCP for the same scripts
Interface	qt_gui_*, qt_dialogs	The windows and dialogs, driven offscreen, with menus checked against WinSCP’s forms
Translations	translations_current, qt_language	Every .ts file matches the sources; translations load
Accessibility	qt_gui_accessibility	Controls have names, and access keys do not clash
Upstream tracking	transform_verify, patch_series	The generated tree is a faithful rewrite of WinSCP’s source

The interface tests run with -platform offscreen, so they need no display.

Servers the tests use

By default the suite uses lightweight servers: rclone for SFTP, OpenSSH’s sshd where a real shell is needed, and small FTP and S3 servers written for the suite in Python. On Debian, install them with:

sudo apt install openssh-server rclone python3-pyftpdlib python3-boto3 \
  python3-moto python3-flask-cors python3-openssl

Real servers

With docker or podman installed, tests labelled real-servers also run against OpenSSH, vsftpd (FTP with explicit and implicit TLS), Apache’s mod_dav (WebDAV with locking) and Versity’s S3 gateway. The image is built from port/tests/servers/ the first time:

ctest --test-dir build/linux -L real-servers

Without a container engine these tests are skipped.

The golden corpus

port/tests/golden/ holds scripts and the XML logs that real WinSCP wrote for them on Windows. The golden test runs the same scripts through linscp-cli and compares the logs. A known, accepted difference is listed in known-differences.txt and does not fail the test.

The test needs the same rclone version the corpus was recorded with:

port/tools/fetch_rclone.py --corpus port/tests/golden/expected --dest build/linux/tools

When you add or change a case, capture the expected logs again with WinSCP on Windows, as port/tests/golden/README.md describes.

Screenshots

The screenshots in this manual and the README are made by a test, against a local server, with the light theme:

port/tests/run_qt_session.py build/linux/port/tests/test_qt_gui screenshots \
  /ini=nul {port} {tmp}/local $PWD/doc/screenshots -platform offscreen

Before you send a change

• Run the whole suite on Linux.
• If the change touches Windows code, run it under Wine too.
• For interface changes, add a test in port/tests/test_qt_gui.cpp and make sure qt_gui_accessibility and translations_current still pass.

See contributing for the rest of the checklist.