Last Updated : Feb 24 2004: freq.ques,v 1.05

This is the Frequently Asked Questions file for the VSX-PCTS1990 test suite.Its maintainer is Andrew Josey (ajosey(at)rdg.opengroup.org). Suggestions and contributions are always welcome.

This document can be found on the world wide web at http://www.opengroup.org/testing/downloads/vsx-pcts-faq.html.

This article includes answers to:

General Questions

G1. What is VSX-PCTS1990? Why make it available?
G2. Where to obtain the latest version of VSX-PCTS1990?
G3. How to report problems with VSX-PCTS1990?
G4. What is the test coverage?
G5. What about test coverage beyond POSIX 1003.1-1990?

G1. What is VSX-PCTS1990? Why make it available?

VSX-PCTS1990 is an implementation of IEEE Std 2003.1 Test Methods for POSIX.1. It is actively maintained by The Open Group and made freely available under an Open Source(tm) licence.

VSX-PCTS1990 is based on the POSIX 1990 test mode of the VSX4 test suite.

In Europe this test suite was the recognized ISO POSIX-1 certification tool for that version of the standard (note the current standard is now 2003).

The Open Group makes this tool available as we believe there is a need for a current and maintained test tool for the POSIX specifications.

G2. Where to obtain the latest version of VSX-PCTS1990?

The latest version of VSX-PCTS1990 can be downloaded from the world wide web at URL http://www.opengroup.org/testing/downloads/vsx-pcts.html.

G3. How to report problems with VSX-PCTS1990?

Questions and problem reports related to VSX-PCTS1990 may be sent to the testing team at The Open Group.

G4. What is the test coverage?

VSX-PCTS1990 provides over 6,000 tests for IEEE Standard POSIX 1003.1-1990 . It uses the industry standard Test Environment Toolkit (TET) as its harness.

The tests are organised in a similar manner to the specifications that they test and may be classified as follows:

• System Interface Tests
• Header File Tests

There are two major sections for the operating system tests, POSIX.os and ANSI.os. These are described in detail in the following sections.

POSIX.os

This includes all the POSIX 2003.1 assertions excluding the majority of the P2003.1 chapter Language-Specific Services for the C Programming Language assertions which are located in the ANSI.os section.

The POSIX tests are divided into the following areas:

• POSIX.os/Csupport

This contains some of the assertions in the P2003.1 chapter Language-Specific Services for the C Programming Language. Assertions which are in both in this chapter and the ANSI C standard (now ISO C) are included in the ANSI.os section. The testsets in this area follow:

fdopen

fileno

siglongjmp

sigsetjmp

tzset

• POSIX.os/dataform

This contains the assertions in the P2003.1 chapter, Data Interchange Format, which includes tests for the following functions:

cpio

tar



• POSIX.os/devclass

This contains the assertions in the P2003.1 chapter, Device- and Class-Specific Functions which includes the following testsets.

c_cc	c_cflag	c_iflag	c_lflag	c_oflag
cfgetispee	cfgetospee	cfsetispee	cfsetospee	i_access
i_canon	i_close	i_ctty	i_inproc	i_modem
i_noncanon	i_spchars	tcdrain	tcflow	tcflush
tcgetattr	tcgetpgrp	tcsendbrea	tcsetattr	tcsetpgrp



• POSIX.os/files

This contains the assertions in the P2003.1 chapter, Files and Directories which includes the following testsets:

access	chdir	chmod	chown	closedir
creat	fpathconf	fstat	getcwd	link
mkdir	mkfifo	open	opendir	pathconf
readdir	rename	rewinddir	rmdir	stat
umask	unlink	utime

• POSIX.os/ioprim

This contains the assertions in the P2003.1 chapter, Input and Output Primitives, which includes the following testsets :

close	dup	dup2	fcntl
lseek	pipe	read	write

• POSIX.os/procenv

This contains the assertions in the P2003.1 chapter, Process Environment, which includes the following testsets:

ctermid	getegid	getenv	geteuid	getgid
getgroups	getlogin	getpgrp	getpid	getppid
getuid	isatty	setgid	setpgid	setsid
setuid	sysconf	time	times	ttyname
uname



• POSIX.os/procprim

This contains the assertions in the P2003.1 chapter, Process Primitives, which includes the following testsets:

_exit	alarm	exec	fork	kill
pause	sigaction	sigaddset	sigconcept	sigdelset
sigemptyse	sigfillset	sigismembe	sigpending	sigprocmas
sigsuspend	sleep	wait	waitpid

• POSIX.os/sysdb

This contains the assertions in the P2003.1 chapter, System Databases, which includes tests for the following functions:

getgrgid

getgrnam

getpwnam

getpwuid

• ANSI.os

This includes all the C Languagage specific P2003.1 assertions plus many additional assertions based on the text of ISO C.

The ANSI tests are divided into the following areas:

• ANSI.os/charhandle

This area contains tests for character handling routines and has the following testsets:

isalnum	isalpha	iscntrl	isdigit	isgraph
islower	isprint	ispunct	isspace	isupper
isxdigit	tolower	toupper

• ANSI.os/diagnostics

This contains a single testset.

assert

• ANSI.os/genuts

This sections contains tests for general functionality and has the following testsets:

abort	abs	atof	atoi	atol
bsearch	calloc	exit	free	malloc
qsort	rand	realloc	srand

• ANSI.os/jump

This section contains "jmp" related functionality.

longjmp

setjmp

• ANSI.os/locale

This section contains a testset for the setlocale function.

setlocale

• ANSI.os/maths

This contains testsets for the mathematical functions.

acos	asin	atan	atan2	ceil
cos	cosh	exp	fabs	floor
fmod	frexp	ldexp	log	log10
modf	pow	sin	sinh	sqrt
tan	tanh

• ANSI.os/streamio

This contains testsets for the stdio-streams related functionality.

clearerr	fclose	feof	ferror	fflush
fgets	fopen	fputs	fread	freopen
fseek	ftell	fwrite	getc	gets
perror	printf	putc	puts	remove
rewind	scanf	setbuf	tmpfile	tmpnam
ungetc	vprintf

• ANSI.os/string

This contains testsets for string related functionality.

strcat	strchr	strcmp	strcpy	strcspn
strlen	strncat	strncmp	strncpy	strpbrk
strrchr	strspn	strstr	strtok

• ANSI.os/time

This contains testsets for time related functionality.

asctime	ctime	gmtime	localtime	mktime
strftime

Header file tests

The sections that test the header files have the suffix hdr. There are two header file test sections, which are organised in a similar manner to the os tests.

The sections are:

• POSIX.hdr

This contains testsets for the POSIX header files.

dirent	errno	fcntl	general	grp
limits	pwd	signal	stat	tar
termios	times	types	unistd_1	unistd_2
unistd_3	utime	utsname	wait

• ANSI.hdr

This contains testsets for the ANSI header files.

assert	ctype	locale	math	setjmp
stdio_1	stdio_2	stdlib	string	time

G5. What about test coverage beyond POSIX 1003.1-1990?

In addition to the VSX-PCTS1990 test suite for ISO/IEC9945-1 (IEEE Std POSIX 1003.1-1990), The Open Group licenses the following VSXgen based operating system test suites:

• VSX4 - VSXgen test package for XPG4 Core Operating System interfaces
• VSX5 - VSXgen test package for the UNIX 98 Dynamic Linking, ISO MSE and LFS extensions
• VSRT - VSXgen test package for IEEE Std 1003.1b-1993/1003.1i-1995 Realtime Amendment
• VSTH - VSXgen test package for IEEE Std 1003.1c-1995 Threads Amendment and UNIX 98 Threads extensions

The Open Group also has available the VSX-PCTS2003 and VSC-PCTS2003 test suites which are freely available to organizations entering POSIX certification.

More information on The Open Group's test suites can be obtained from URL http://www.opengroup.org/testing, including an online catalogue at http://www.opengroup.org/testing/testsuites.

POSIX is a registered trademark of the IEEE.