Setting Up for Testing

Add dev dependencies

Test tooling only needs to be present during testing, so you add it under [dev-dependencies] in Cargo.toml. This keeps your program's production binary lean.

Add the following to your Cargo.toml:

[dev-dependencies]
solana-program-test = "2.3.3"
solana-sdk = "2.3.1"
tokio = "1.44.1"

Here is what each dependency does:

• solana-program-test: Provides the in-process Solana validator, the ProgramTest builder, and the BanksClient interface for submitting transactions and reading accounts.
• solana-sdk: Provides the client-side types you need to build transactions — Keypair, Transaction, Instruction, AccountMeta, and more.
• tokio: The async runtime. solana-program-test is async, so your test functions need to be async and run inside a Tokio runtime.

Enable the lib crate type

For solana-program-test to load your program, your crate must expose a lib target alongside the cdylib you configured for deployment. If you haven't already, update the [lib] section of your Cargo.toml:

[lib]
crate-type = ["cdylib", "lib"]

The cdylib target produces the .so binary the validator deploys on-chain. The lib target lets the test binary import your program's types directly — things like PollInstructions, Poll, PollOption, and VoteRecord — so you can build instructions and deserialize account data without any external serialization ceremony.

Create the test file structure

Create the files and folders below inside your project root:

mkdir -p tests/utils
touch tests/create_poll.rs tests/cast_vote.rs tests/close_poll.rs
touch tests/utils/fund_account.rs tests/utils/submit_tx.rs

Your project structure should now look like this:

voting_program/
├── src/
│   ├── lib.rs
│   ├── instructions.rs
│   ├── processor.rs
│   ├── errors.rs
│   └── state/
│       ├── poll.rs
│       ├── poll_option.rs
│       ├── vote_record.rs
│       └── creator_stats.rs
└── tests/
    ├── create_poll.rs
    ├── cast_vote.rs
    ├── close_poll.rs
    └── utils/
        ├── fund_account.rs
        └── submit_tx.rs

Each test file corresponds to one instruction. The utils/ folder holds shared helpers that every test file can pull in.