General instructions for testing:

• A test file is a single file with a collection of test cases.

• The test file should be named with a desired filename followed by _test.go, like yourfilename_test.go.

• Each test case is a function with its name beginning with the word Test followed by a word or a phrase that starts with a capital letter. For example TestRequestVote and TestRaft are valid test case names while Testrequestvote, TestrequestVote and Testraft are invalid test case names.

• The first and only parameter for every test case function is t *testing.T.

• For handling failure conditions, call t.Error() or t.Fail(). These are similar to fmt.Print(). Use fmt.Errorf() if you want formatting similar to fmt.Printf().

• t.Log() can be used to provide debug information.

• Check the test cases written in the file raft_test.go for reference.

• Please write proper documentation for the tests, describing what feature it tests and how it manages to do so. This can be written in a comment block before the corresponding test case function.

How to write new test cases:

• The functions in the file testing_utils.go, should contain the necessary functions needed for testing, for example, functions for setting up a Raft system, crashing a single node, destroying the whole system, counting number of leaders, etc.

• Always start a test by calling the start_test() function which should return a pointer to the testing struct of type testing_st. The parameters to start_test are the t *testing.T object and the number of nodes that should exist in the Raft system to be created.

• testing_st is a struct that needs to be created for every test case. This will hold the RaftNode structs and other data related to individual nodes so that a global view of the system is available.

• Perform operations on the testing system and check its status using the functions in testing_utils.go.

• End the test case by using end_test() and passing the testing system to it as a parameter.