# Getting started with unit testing in Julia
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/getting-started-with-unit-testing-in-julia/19216
**Category:** New to Julia
**Created:** [January 3, 2019, 12:02am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/getting-started-with-unit-testing-in-julia/19216 "2019-01-03T00:02:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Gus\_Hart](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Gus_Hart)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2019, 12:02am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/getting-started-with-unit-testing-in-julia/19216/1 "2019-01-03T00:02:34Z")
I’m coming from a (mostly) Fortran/Python background.
Can someone give me a place to start for writing/running unit tests for my Julia code? A tutorial somewhere perhaps? And getting coverage testing and CI running? I’ve written a bit in Julia already but I’m ready to get serious and I’d like to maintain the good software engineering habits I tried to foster when I did a lot of python…
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### Author:  [@c42f](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/c42f)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2019, 12:57am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/getting-started-with-unit-testing-in-julia/19216/2 "2019-01-03T00:57:35Z")
The standard library [`Test`](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/stdlib/Test/index.html) is great for testing things. It provides a `@test` macro which can be used for most things, and a few other macros for special cases. There’s also `@testset` to group your tests, though that’s not mandatory. A taste:
```julia
julia> using Test
julia> @test 1 == 1
Test Passed
julia> @test 1 == sum([1,2])
Test Failed at REPL[3]:1
Expression: 1 == sum([1, 2])
Evaluated: 1 == 3
ERROR: There was an error during testing
julia> @testset "some tests" begin
# Simple tests which pass
@test 1 == 1
@test sum([1,2,3]) == 6
# Numerical testing with `isapprox` (\approx ≈):
@test sqrt(2) ≈ 1.414213562
# The following works to supply tolerance keywords to ≈:
@test sqrt(2) ≈ 1.4142135623730951 rtol=1e-16 atol=0
# Tests which fail give nice error reporting
a = [1,2,3]
@test sum(a) == 7
# Exceptional circumstances can be tested for
@test_throws DivideError 1÷0
# Tests which currently don't work can be documented as such
@test_broken 1 == 2
# Tests which are so broken they shouldn't be run can be skipped
@test_skip just_broken
end
some tests: Test Failed at REPL[10]:13
Expression: sum(a) == 7
Evaluated: 6 == 7
Stacktrace:
[1] macro expansion at ./REPL[10]:13 [inlined]
[2] macro expansion at /buildworker/worker/package_linux64/build/usr/share/julia/stdlib/v1.0/Test/src/Test.jl:1083 [inlined]
[3] top-level scope at ./REPL[10]:3
Test Summary: | Pass Fail Broken Total
some tests | 5 1 2 8
ERROR: Some tests did not pass: 5 passed, 1 failed, 0 errored, 2 broken.
```
To use `Test` most effectively, you should put your code into a proper package structure which will allow you to use `Pkg.test` (or simply `test YourPkg` from the pkg REPL mode). I suggest using [PkgTemplates.jl](https://invenia.github.io/PkgTemplates.jl/stable/) to generate a standard package structure including your choice of CI config for Travis / Appveyor / GitLab (/ others?), automatic upload of coverage data to Coveralls or CodeCov and other package stuff like the package definition, license file etc.
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### Author:  [@phma](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/phma)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2019, 4:48am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/getting-started-with-unit-testing-in-julia/19216/3 "2019-01-03T04:48:26Z")
I used PkgTemplates to create a package. It creates a file ~/src/foo/test/runtests.jl , which contains a test that 1 == 2, which of course fails. When you have some code to test, you put the test there instead of “@test 1 == 2”.
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### Author:  [@Gus\_Hart](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Gus_Hart)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2019, 9:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/getting-started-with-unit-testing-in-julia/19216/4 "2019-01-19T21:09:23Z")
Thanks for the input.
A 2 minute walkthrough to set up a package using PkgTemplates would be nice…
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### Author:  [@Tero\_Frondelius](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tero_Frondelius)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2019, 8:08am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/getting-started-with-unit-testing-in-julia/19216/5 "2019-01-20T08:08:25Z")
> [@Gus\_Hart](#):
>
> A 2 minute walkthrough to set up a package using PkgTemplates would be nice…
This is open source. Now when you have figured that out, you can make the video / blog post and post the link here.