AutomatedTests
RT has a full test suite for ensuring functionality remains functional between changes. Best Practical smoke tests every commit on a variety of configurations, but it's good practice to run tests yourself if you're making changes to RT when writing a patch you plan to submit (or even one you don't!). The test suite is quite large, and will take some time to run.
Instructions for running the tests are in RT's official documentation: http://bestpractical.com/rt/docs/latest/hacking#Test-suite