APBS validation and test cases

This directory serves as the root directory for the APBS test suite. This directory contains python source files used for testing an input file containing the input files used by the apbs executable and the expected results for each test case.

The default input file is called test_cases.cfg, and the main testing program is called apbs_tester.py.

Usage

Note

It is important that you run the tests from the command line and that you run them from within the INSTALL_DIR/share/apbs/tests directory.

A usage description for apbs_tester.py can be obtained by running:

python3 apbs_tester.py -h

Test Sections

The sections of the test file, test_cases.cfg, follow the following format:

[Some-Target_Test]
input_dir     : ../path/to/some-example
some-forces   : forces
some-input    : * * 1.0E+01 2.0E+02

where:

  • The first element in brackets [Some-Target_Test] describes the name of the target_test section.
  • After the first element, the remaining elements are property/value pairs
  • The first property is the input_dir. This is the location of all input files referenced in other properties.
  • A property has a name that is also the basename of the input file concatenated with the file extension, input-file.in.
  • The property name will also be used for the output from apbs some-input.in to create the output file, some-input.out
  • If the value of the property is forces the test will calcalate forces.
  • If the value of the property is a list of floating point numbers, the values are expected outputs.
  • If a * is used in place of a floating point number, the output will be ignored. Some test cases have multiple outputs. The test function parses each of these, but if a * is used, the output will be ignored in testing. Most often, the first outputs are intermediate values followed by a final output, and the test case is only concerned with the final output.

Examples

The following will run the apbs_tester.py specifying the path to the apbs executable and using the geoflow section of the test_cases.cfg file:

python3 apbs_tester.py -e ${INSTALL_DIR}/bin/apbs -c test_cases.cfg -t geoflow

where INSTALL_DIR is the path to your installation directory.