Test panic with Randomness::random() 'attempt to subtract with overflow'

Question

Sorry for the title but I don't know how to explain it better.

I have this simple custom pallet and I try to test the create_random_number dispatchable function with a simple assert_ok! but I get this error from the terminal:

running 2 tests
test mock::__construct_runtime_integrity_test::runtime_integrity_tests ... ok
test tests::crate_random_number ... FAILED

failures:

---- tests::crate_random_number stdout ----
thread 'tests::crate_random_number' panicked at 'attempt to subtract with overflow', /rustc/263edd43c5255084292329423c61a9d69715ebfa/library/core/src/ops/arith.rs:240:1

The test panic at this line but I don't understand why because if I try to cargo build --release and call this function on the polkadot app it works fine.

Answer 1

This is caused by the fact that the block-number is 0 when your test runs.
The coinflip pallet then tries to calculate 0-1 here.
You can set the block-number to 1 in your new_test_ext function like this:

pub fn new_test_ext() -> sp_io::TestExternalities {
    let mut ext: sp_io::TestExternalities = system::GenesisConfig::default().build_storage::<Test>().unwrap().into();
    ext.execute_with(|| System::set_block_number(1));
    ext
}

Many tests do that, for similar reasons, so its not a red-flag.