| name | test-edirect |
| description | Use when smoke-testing an Entrez Direct installation with the bundled long-form example suite or the focused `-test` trace mode. |
| disable-model-invocation | true |
| user-invocable | true |
test-edirect
Large shell-based demonstration and smoke-test script for Entrez Direct. With no arguments it runs a long sequence of real EDirect examples and prints titled sections such as INFO HELP, FIELD EXAMPLE, and LINK EXAMPLE. It also has a special -test mode that enables tracing around one targeted pipeline.
Quick Start
- Command:
test-edirect
- Local executable:
/home/vimalinx/miniforge3/envs/bio/bin/test-edirect
- Special modes:
-timer, -timed, -test
When To Use This Tool
- Verifying that a local EDirect installation can execute a broad set of canonical example workflows
- Running a human-readable smoke suite instead of a one-endpoint connectivity probe
- Spot-checking whether
esearch, efetch, elink, xtract, and related helpers all cooperate correctly
- Using the focused
-test path when you want tracing around one smaller pipeline
Common Patterns
test-edirect
test-edirect -timer
test-edirect -test
Recommended Workflow
- Start with a plain
test-edirect run when you want a broad installation smoke test.
- Use
-timer if you care about rough section timings.
- Use
-test when you want a much narrower traced pipeline instead of the whole suite.
- Treat this tool as a diagnostic/demo harness, not as a stable machine-readable checker.
Guardrails
-h and --version are not help/version modes; locally both failed with Unrecognized option.- The default no-arg path is long-running and network-dependent. In a bounded local run it began by printing
EDirect 24.0, Linux - x86_64, then section headers like INFO HELP, FIELD EXAMPLE, and LINK EXAMPLE.
- Source inspection shows
-test exports EDIRECT_TRACE=true and runs a specific esearch | efilter | elink | xtract pipeline before exiting.
- Because the script exercises many live EDirect examples, failures may reflect network issues, remote content drift, or one broken helper anywhere in the chain.
