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Learn how to test your Go exercises on Exercism
Go exercises within your exercism project directory can be run by changing to the exercise directory, and running go test.
$ cd exercism/project/directory/go/leap
$ go test
In addition to running go test, some exercises should be run with a flag for data race detector to check that your solution does not introduce data race bugs. You will find a reminder to run tests with the data race detector flag -race in the relevant exercises. Run go test -race to check for data race. For example:
$ cd exercism/project/directory/go/bank-account
$ go test -race
Most exercises contain benchmarks, that you can use to determine how changes to your solution affect its performance. To run the benchmarks for an exercise use the command go test -v --bench . --benchmem inside the exercise directory.
For example:
BenchmarkReverse-16 403594 2537 ns/op 176 B/op 34 allocs/op
means that the benchmark took 403594 iterations to be timed reliably. The average speed was 2537 ns per loop. 34 memory allocations happened per operations with an average of 176 Bytes.
Example tests are used in some exercises and are run alongside the standard exercise tests. These examples are used for documenting and verifying the exercise's API and can be useful in determining what the expected exercise API is.
Please run go fmt on your code before submitting it.
The README.md for each exercise gives a general description but the Go test program will be very specific. Open the test program and give it a quick look - if it seems like cheating, do it anyway. Look for helpful comments, test data, and just the names of the test functions. Try running go test before you have written anything and see if the error messages give you an idea of where to start.
Your first goal is to get something to compile, even though it fails tests. For this, you should "stub" functions. That means leave the body empty, except for whatever it must return. Write return 0 or return "" or whatever just to get it to compile. Sometimes to figure out function signatures you will have to go back to the test program and read in more detail. Once you have figured out all the required function signatures, the test program will complain that 0 is the wrong answer. Now start filling in function bodies.
Tests will often stop at the first error. Fix that one, repeat until no errors. go test has useful options. go test -v will give more verbose output. go test -run <regexp> will run just tests with names that match <regexp>.
Panics produce lots of output. It might seem scary at first, but be brave. Look at the very top of the panic output for the panic message. That should give a general description of the problem. Then read through the rest of it looking for the first reference to your code. That will often point right to the problem.
To find problems with concurrent programs, try go test -race.
Let's say that again, run go fmt.
Golint can inform you about style issues in your code that go fmt won't catch.
You might also look at go vet, which warns about potential problems in your code.
Read and heed frequent comments from code reviews.
For an exercise that involves concurrency, try go test -race even if passes its tests.
Keep readability in mind even if you optimize for benchmark performance. Sometimes optimization can help you discover solutions that are concise and readable, but there can be a temptation to abandon readability in the pursuit of performance.
A few exercises have bonus tests that do not run with just go test. If you are solving the bonus exercise in addition to the regular exercise, you will have to type go test -tags bonus, or some similar command as given in the test program documentation.