How can you run the testsuite on selected tests?

In order to run sets of tests selectively, there are targets make check-gcc and language specific make check-c, make check-c++, make check-d make check-fortran, make check-ada, make check-objc, make check-obj-c++, make check-lto in the gcc subdirectory of the object directory. You can also just run make check in a subdirectory of the object directory.

A more selective way to just run all gcc execute tests in the testsuite is to use

make check-gcc RUNTESTFLAGS="execute.exp other-options"

Likewise, in order to run only the g++ ‘old-deja’ tests in the testsuite with filenames matching 9805*, you would use

make check-g++ RUNTESTFLAGS="old-deja.exp=9805* other-options"

The file-matching expression following filename.exp= is treated as a series of whitespace-delimited glob expressions so that multiple patterns may be passed, although any whitespace must either be escaped or surrounded by single quotes if multiple expressions are desired. For example,

make check-g++ RUNTESTFLAGS="old-deja.exp=9805*\ virtual2.c other-options"
make check-g++ RUNTESTFLAGS="'old-deja.exp=9805* virtual2.c' other-options"

The *.exp files are located in the testsuite directories of the GCC source, the most important ones being compile.exp, execute.exp, dg.exp and old-deja.exp. To get a list of the possible *.exp files, pipe the output of make check into a file and look at the Running ...  .exp lines.