How to set the go timeout flag on "Go test"

Question

go test -timeout 99999 

throws this non sense error

invalid value "99999" for flag -test.timeout:  time: missing unit in duration 99999 

Is it a bug ? I'm using go version go1.3

The "help" cli is useless too. It says -test.timeout=0: if positive, sets an aggregate time limit for all tests. However if you do go test -test.timeout 99999 you get the same error

 -test.timeout=0: if positive, sets an aggregate time limit for all tests 

Answer 1

Use a valid time.ParseDuration input. For example,

$ go test -timeout 300ms  $ go test -timeout 99999s 

Command go

Testing flags

-timeout t 

If a test runs longer than t, panic.

Package flag

Duration flags accept any input valid for time.ParseDuration.

Package time

func ParseDuration

func ParseDuration(s string) (Duration, error) 

ParseDuration parses a duration string. A duration string is a possibly signed sequence of decimal numbers, each with optional fraction and a unit suffix, such as "300ms", "-1.5h" or "2h45m". Valid time units are "ns", "us" (or "µs"), "ms", "s", "m", "h".

Answer 2

If you need this for just one test that you want to easily fail when it times out there is a neat way of just using timeout channels.

If I suspect a test will time out and I still want it to fail is to work with a timeout channel.

So imagine you have code where you suspect that some goroutines will deadlock and you want to make sure your test fails on that.

For that I run the actual test in a goroutine and the main goroutine then sits around waiting for either the done channel to finish or the timeout to finish.

func TestWithTimeOut(t *testing.T) {     timeout := time.After(3 * time.Second)     done := make(chan bool)     go func() {         // do your testing         time.Sleep(5 * time.Second)         done <- true     }()      select {     case <-timeout:         t.Fatal("Test didn't finish in time")     case <-done:     } }