There are two major categories of tests, segregated into different top-level directories under test/. The first category (ipdl/) is IPDL-compiler tests. These tests check that the IPDL compiler is successfully compiling correct specifications, and successfully rejecting erroneous specifications. To run these tests yourself locally, the correct invocation is make -C obj-dir/ipc/ipdl/test/ipdl check The second category (cxx/) is C++ tests of IPDL semantics. These tests check that async/sync/rpc semantics are implemented correctly, ctors/dtors behave as they should, etc.