bulloak

A Solidity test generator based on the Branching Tree Technique.

• Installation
  • VSCode
• Usage
  • bulloak scaffold
  • bulloak check
    • Rules
  • Compiler Errors
• Trees
  • Terminology
  • Spec
• Output
• Contributing
• License

[!WARNING] bulloak is still 0.*.*, so breaking changes may occur at any time. If you must depend on bulloak, we recommend pinning to a specific version, i.e., =0.y.z.

Installation

cargo install bulloak

VSCode

The following VSCode extensions are not essential but they are recommended for a better user experience:

• Tree: syntax highlighting for .tree files
• Ascii Tree Generator: convenient way to generate ASCII trees

Usage

bulloak implements two commands:

• bulloak scaffold
• bulloak check

Scaffold Solidity Files

Say you have a foo.tree file with the following contents:

FooTest
└── When stuff is called // Comments are supported.
    └── When a condition is met
        └── It should revert.
            └── Because we shouldn't allow it.

You can use bulloak scaffold to generate a Solidity contract containing modifiers and tests that match the spec described in foo.tree. The following will be printed to stdout:

$ bulloak scaffold foo.tree
pragma solidity 0.8.0;

contract FooTest {
  modifier whenStuffIsCalled() {
    _;
  }

  function test_WhenAConditionIsMet()
    external
    whenStuffIsCalled
  {
    // It should revert.
    //     Because we shouldn't allow it.
  }
}

You can use the -w option to write the generated contracts to the file system. Say we have a bunch of .tree files in the current working directory. If we run the following:

$ bulloak scaffold -w ./**/*.tree

bulloak will create a .t.sol file per .tree file and write the generated contents to it.

If a .t.sol file's title matches a .tree in the same directory, then bulloak will skip writing to that file. However, you may override this behaviour with the -f flag. This will force bulloak to overwrite the contents of the file.

$ bulloak scaffold -wf ./**/*.tree

Check That Your Code And Spec Match

You can use bulloak check to make sure that your Solidity files match your spec. For example, any missing tests will be reported to you.

Say you have the following spec:

HashPairTest
├── It should never revert.
├── When first arg is smaller than second arg
│   └── It should match the result of `keccak256(abi.encodePacked(a,b))`.
└── When first arg is bigger than second arg
    └── It should match the result of `keccak256(abi.encodePacked(b,a))`.

And a matching Solidity file:

pragma solidity 0.8.0;

contract HashPairTest {
  function test_ShouldNeverRevert() external {
    // It should never revert.
  }

  function test_WhenFirstArgIsSmallerThanSecondArg() external {
    // It should match the result of `keccak256(abi.encodePacked(a,b))`.
  }
}

This Solidity file is missing the tests for the branch When first arg is bigger than second arg, which would be reported after running bulloak check, like so:

warn: function "test_WhenFirstArgIsBiggerThanSecondArg" is missing in .sol
     + fix: run `bulloak check --fix tests/scaffold/basic.tree`
   ~~> tests/scaffold/basic.tree:5

warn: 1 check failed (run `bulloak check --fix <.tree files>` to apply 1 fix)

As you can see in the above message, bulloak can fix the issue automatically. If we run the command with the --stdout flag, the output is:

~~> tests/scaffold/basic.t.sol
pragma solidity 0.8.0;

contract HashPairTest {
    function test_ShouldNeverRevert() external {
        // It should never revert.
    }

    function test_WhenFirstArgIsSmallerThanSecondArg() external {
        // It should match the result of `keccak256(abi.encodePacked(a,b))`.
    }

    function test_WhenFirstArgIsBiggerThanSecondArg() external {
        // It should match the result of `keccak256(abi.encodePacked(b,a))`.
    }
}
<~~

success: 1 issue fixed.

Running the command without the --stdout flag will overwrite the contents of the solidity file with the fixes applied. Note that not all issues can be automatically fixed, and bulloak's output will reflect that.

warn: 13 checks failed (run `bulloak check --fix <.tree files>` to apply 11 fixes)

Rules

The following rules are currently implemented:

• A Solidity file matching the spec file must exist and be readable.
  • The spec and the Solidity file match if the difference between their names is only .tree & .t.sol.
• There is a contract in the Solidity file and its name matches the root node of the spec.
• Every construct, as it would be generated by bulloak scaffold, is present in the Solidity file.
• The order of every construct, as it would be generated by bulloak scaffold, matches the spec order.
  • Any valid Solidity construct is allowed and only construct that would be generated by bulloak scaffold are checked. This means that any number of extra functions, modifiers, etc. can be added to the file.

Compiler Errors

Another feature of bulloak is reporting errors in your input trees.

For example, say you have a buggy foo.tree file, which is missing a └ character. Running bulloak scaffold foo.tree would report the error like this:

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
bulloak error: unexpected `when` keyword

── when the id references a null stream
   ^^^^

--- (line 2, column 4) ---
file: foo.tree

Trees

bulloak scaffold scaffolds Solidity test files based on .tree specifications that follow the Branching Tree Technique.

Currently, there is on-going discussion on how to handle different edge-cases to better empower the Solidity community. This section is a description of the current implementation of the compiler.

Terminology

• Condition: when/given branches of a tree.
• Action: it branches of a tree.
• Action Description: Children of an action.

Spec

Each tree file should describe a function under test. Trees follow these rules:

• The line at the top of the file is the name of the contract.
• bulloak expects you to use ├ and └ characters to denote branches.
• If a branch starts with either when or given, it is a condition.
  • when and given are interchangeable.
• If a branch starts with it, it is an action.
  • Any child branch an action has is called an action description.
• Keywords are case-insensitive: it is the same as It and IT.
• Anything starting with a // is a comment and will be stripped from the output.

Take the following Solidity function:

function hashPair(bytes32 a, bytes32 b) private pure returns (bytes32) {
    return a < b ? hash(a, b) : hash(b, a);
}

A reasonable spec for the above function would be:

HashPairTest
├── It should never revert.
├── When first arg is smaller than second arg
│   └── It should match the result of `keccak256(abi.encodePacked(a,b))`.
└── When first arg is bigger than second arg
    └── It should match the result of `keccak256(abi.encodePacked(b,a))`.

There is a top-level action which will generate a test to check the function invariant that it should never revert.

Then, we have the two possible preconditions: a < b and a >= b. Both branches end in an action that will make bulloak scaffold generate the respective test.

Note the following things:

• Actions are written with ending dots but conditions are not. This is because actions support any character, but conditions don't. Since conditions are transformed into modifiers, they have to be valid Solidity identifiers.
• You can have top-level actions without conditions. Currently, bulloak also supports actions with sibling conditions, but this might get removed in a future version per this discussion.
• The root of the tree will be emitted as the name of the test contract.

Output

There are a few things to keep in mind about the scaffolded Solidity test:

• The contract filename is the same as the .tree but with a .t.sol extension. E.g. test.tree would correspond to test.t.sol.
• Test are emitted in the order their corresponding actions appear in the .tree file.
• We generate one modifier per condition, except for leaf condition nodes.
• Test names follow Foundry's best practices.

Contributing

Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md.

Publishing

These are the current steps taken to publish bulloak:

• Bump the version field in Cargo.toml.
• Update the CHANGELOG.md file with git cliff -o CHANGELOG.md. This step includes setting the proper header for the latest tag.
• Commit the changes.
• Run cargo publish --dry-run to make sure that everything looks good.
• Create the corresponding git tag named after the version.
• Push to origin.
• Run cargo publish.

License

This project is licensed under either of:

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0).
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).