Problem:
The Lua test harness still ran through standalone -ll mode, so tests
depended on the low-level Lua path instead of the regular Nvim Lua
environment. That also meant os.exit() coverage had to carry an ASAN
workaround because Lua's raw process exit skipped Nvim teardown and let
LeakSanitizer interfere with the observed exit code.
Solution:
Run the harness and related fixtures with nvim -l. Patch os.exit() in
the main Lua state to exit through getout(), so scripts observe normal
Nvim shutdown while standalone -ll remains available for generator-style
scripts. As a consequence, the startup test can assert os.exit() without
disabling leak detection.
AI-assisted: Codex
This feature might be a little silly and niche, but it is very useful
for _my_ workflow (and open source is about mee)
An issue which is never present on high quality RELEASE builds, but
might occur on Debug builds is that the Nvim server crashes
on some error in your unfinished PR code. If you compile your debug
builds with sanitizers enabled, as you should, the ASAN/UBSAN runtime
will print some useful info about your mistake to stderr or a log file,
such as a stack trace. This can be used to jump to the error in the
code.
This allows the nvim server to install a signal hander in the ui client,
which can load this log file in a good safe version of nvim and parse it
using 'errorformat'
This is inspired by the "press ENTER" free workflow of ui2 and applies
it beyond the lifetime cycle of the nvim instance.
example config:
```lua
local asan = vim.env.ASAN_OPTIONS
if asan ~= nil and string.match(asan, "log_path=/tmp/nvim_asan") then
local myname = "/tmp/nvim_asan."..vim.uv.getpid()
local args = {"--embed", "-n", "+set efm=%+A%*[^/]%f:%l:%c", "+silent cfile "..myname, "+silent cfirst", "+silent copen"}
vim.api.nvim__set_restart_on_crash("nvim", args)
end
```
and run your debug nvim like so
ASAN_OPTIONS=handle_abort=1,handle_sigill=1,log_path=/tmp/nvim_asan ./build/bin/nvim
Replace the busted-based Lua test runner with a repo-local harness.
The new harness runs spec files directly under `nvim -ll`, ships its own
reporter and lightweight `luassert` shim, and keeps the helper/preload
flow used by the functional and unit test suites.
Keep the file boundary model shallow and busted-like by restoring `_G`,
`package.loaded`, `package.preload`, `arg`, and the process environment
between files, without carrying extra reset APIs or custom assertion
machinery.
Update the build and test entrypoints to use the new runner, add
black-box coverage for the harness itself, and drop the bundled
busted/luacheck dependency path.
AI-assisted: Codex
- Rename ".nvimlog" to "nvim.log"
- doesn't need to be "hidden"/dotfile
- ".log" extension helps with filetype detection
- Also rename "nvim/log" => "nvim/nvim.log"
Problem: running ./build/bin/nvim without make install
- doesn't respect local changes in ./runtime,
- includes the path where Nvim would be installed,
- ignores changes in precompiled Lua modules (like .../vim/_editor.lua)
Solution:
- use VIMRUNTIME=./runtime,
- use --luamod-dev
Problem: Docs about how to obtain backtraces on Linux is not very
beginner-friendly; some users used to have difficulties in getting
stacktrace against Nvim crash.
For instance, the `core` dump file might not appear in the current
directory on Ubuntu systems with apport, and the current docs do not
fully cover such cases.
Solution: Add more hints about where core dump files can be found. For
example, on Ubuntu where apport is managing core dump files, users would
want to find them in `/var/lib/apport/coredump`.
Specifically, functions that are run in the context of the test runner
are put in module `test/testutil.lua` while the functions that are run
in the context of the test session are put in
`test/functional/testnvim.lua`.
Closes https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/27004.
Problem: Wiki contents are not discoverable and hard to maintain.
Solution: Move FAQ to runtime docs.
Co-authored-by: Christian Clason <c.clason@uni-graz.at>
