Test Suite

Running and writing tests for ALF. The test suite lives in testsuite/ and uses CMake + CTest.

Running Tests¶

Tests are built and run separately from the main code. Three configurations are available:

No-MPI tests¶

source configure.sh GNU nompi
make cleanlib cleanprog && make -j5 all
cd testsuite && mkdir -p test && cd test
cmake .. && make -j5 && ctest -j5 --output-on-failure
cd ../.. && rm -rf testsuite/test

MPI tests¶

source configure.sh GNU mpi
make cleanlib cleanprog && make -j5 all
cd testsuite && mkdir -p test && cd test
cmake .. && make -j5 && ctest -j5 --output-on-failure
cd ../.. && rm -rf testsuite/test

Tempering tests¶

source configure.sh GNU tempering
make cleanlib cleanprog && make -j5 all
cd testsuite && mkdir -p test && cd test
cmake .. && make -j5 && ctest -j5 --output-on-failure
cd ../.. && rm -rf testsuite/test

Tip: VS Code tasks are provided for all three configurations — see the “testsuite nompi/mpi/tempering” tasks.

Test Structure¶

testsuite/
├── CMakeLists.txt            # Top-level: enables sub-directories
├── matmod.tests/             # Matrix module unit tests
│   └── CMakeLists.txt
├── Prog.tests/               # QMC operator unit tests
│   └── CMakeLists.txt
├── test_vs_ed/               # QMC vs exact diagonalization regression tests
│   ├── test_specs.yaml       # Test parameters and reference values
│   └── compare_dirs.py       # Comparison utility
└── test_branch_parameters.json

Matrix Module Tests (`matmod.tests/`)¶

Unit tests for the linear algebra infrastructure: matrix diagonalization, inversion, UDV decomposition. These catch low-level numerical issues early.

Operator Unit Tests (`Prog.tests/`)¶

Tests for the QMC operator algebra: Op_make, mmultL/mmultR (operator × Green function), Wrapup/Wrapdo (time-slice propagation), cgr (Green function computation), UDV/QDRP stabilization.

QMC vs Exact Diagonalization (`test_vs_ed/`)¶

Regression tests that run short QMC simulations and compare the total energy against exact diagonalization results. Configured via test_specs.yaml:

hubbard_finT_chain:
  ed_energy: -1.47261997
  max_sigma: 3
  max_delta: 0.002

A test passes if the QMC energy agrees with the ED value within max_sigma standard deviations and max_delta absolute deviation.

CI¶

GitHub Actions workflows run the test suite automatically:

test-branch.yaml: Compares a branch against master using alf_test_branch (pyALF). Matrix of environments: Debian (GNU), Intel, PGI, macOS.
test-vs-ed.yaml: QMC vs ED regression tests. Three stages: prepare → simulate (parallelized across environments) → analyze.

Both are workflow_dispatch (manually triggered).

Writing New Tests¶

Unit test: Add a Fortran test program to matmod.tests/ or Prog.tests/, register it in the corresponding CMakeLists.txt with add_test()
Regression test: Add a new entry to test_vs_ed/test_specs.yaml with the model parameters and ED reference energy
Run ctest --output-on-failure to verify