Various tests, particularly the client program tests under src/bin, use the Perl TAP tools and are run using the Perl testing program prove. You can pass command-line options to prove by setting the make variable PROVE_FLAGS, for example:
make -C src/bin check PROVE_FLAGS='--timer'
See the manual page of prove for more information.
The make variable PROVE_TESTS can be used to define a whitespace-separated list of paths relative to the Makefile invoking prove to run the specified subset of tests instead of the default t/*.pl. For example:
make check PROVE_TESTS='t/001_test1.pl t/003_test3.pl'
The TAP tests require the Perl module IPC::Run. This module is available from CPAN or an operating system package. They also require PostgreSQL to be configured with the option --enable-tap-tests.
Generically speaking, the TAP tests will test the executables in a previously-installed installation tree if you say make installcheck, or will build a new local installation tree from current sources if you say make check. In either case they will initialize a local instance (data directory) and transiently run a server in it. Some of these tests run more than one server. Thus, these tests can be fairly resource-intensive.
It's important to realize that the TAP tests will start test server(s) even when you say make installcheck; this is unlike the traditional non-TAP testing infrastructure, which expects to use an already-running test server in that case. Some PostgreSQL subdirectories contain both traditional-style and TAP-style tests, meaning that make installcheck will produce a mix of results from temporary servers and the already-running test server.
Data directories are named according to the test filename, and will be retained if a test fails. If the environment variable PG_TEST_NOCLEAN is set, data directories will be retained regardless of test status. For example, retaining the data directory regardless of test results when running the pg_dump tests:
PG_TEST_NOCLEAN=1 make -C src/bin/pg_dump check
This environment variable also prevents the test's temporary directories from being removed.
Many operations in the test suites use a 180-second timeout, which on slow hosts may lead to load-induced timeouts. Setting the environment variable PG_TEST_TIMEOUT_DEFAULT to a higher number will change the default to avoid this.
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