test-edirect

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

# Run the full demonstration / smoke suite
test-edirect

# Add elapsed times between sections
test-edirect -timer

# Run the focused trace-enabled test path
test-edirect -test

Recommended Workflow

1. Start with a plain test-edirect run when you want a broad installation smoke test.
2. Use -timer if you care about rough section timings.
3. Use -test when you want a much narrower traced pipeline instead of the whole suite.
4. 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.