Test Suite

The test suite is designed to test the software for a number of features. The suite will be composed of COPASI files (or SBML or Gepasi format) accompanied by a file that has a short description of the purpose of the test and the expected outcomes.

We antecipate that the test suite will focus on the following aspects:

• accuracy of calculations
• speed of calculations
• ability to read file formats

Each test should contain a set of files with the same basename. The basename should be descriptive but not too long and contain only alphanumeric characters and underline and dash. Some type of input or output may contain several files, for example a test may write out several report files, or there could be several files with data for fitting; in those cases these files will have a number after the basename separated by a dot. The tests will often consist of a COPASI run that produces output file that are then to be matched against supplied target output files (ie what we expect COPASI to write).

For numerical comparisons, which must only match within some predefined tolerances we use an enhanced version of ndiff. This version only reports errors which are larger than given absolute and relative errors simultaneously.

The files should primarily be added to the CVS and then also to this page (which may be automated in some way).

There should be at least two files for each test: a description file named basename.dsc and the file to load into COPASI, which commonly will be basename.cps but could also be basename.xml or basename.gps. In many cases there may be extra files, for example a file with targeted output eg. basename.1.txt.tgt or an input data file for fitting basename.1.dat.

type of file	filename structure	function
Description	basename.dsc	description of the purpose of this test
Shell Script	basename.sh	script to run the test
COPASI input file	basename.cps	the COPASI model and tasks
SBML input file	basename.xml	an SBML file to import
Gepasi input file	basename.gps	a Gepasi file with a model and tasks
Input data file	basename.1.dat	a file with data for tasks that need it (eg fitting); the number is optional if there is only one of these
Target report file	basename.1.txt.tgt	a report file that is a target to match (supplied); the number is optional if there is only one of these
Report file	basename.1.txt	a report file created by running the input file; the number is optional if there is only one of these

Template for the description file: