test: add minimal unit tests for some utilities #1272

Job	Run time
Build	2m 8s
Check format	1m 41s
Smoke test	6m 27s
Test intel fortran (ubuntu-22.04, intel-classic, 2021.7)	33m 58s
Parallel testing (ubuntu-22.04)	16m 16s
Test gnu fortran (ubuntu-22.04)	43m 15s
Test intel fortran (macos-12, intel-classic, 2021.7)	33m 13s
Parallel testing (macos-12)	20m 3s
Test intel fortran (windows-2022, intel-classic, 2021.7)	58m 39s
Test gnu fortran (macos-12)	40m 38s
Test gnu fortran (windows-2022)	59m 5s
	5h 15m 23s

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