W dniu 18.10.2012 03:45, Michael Hudson-Doyle pisze:
Zygmunt Krynicki zygmunt.krynicki@linaro.org writes:
W dniu 17.10.2012 19:11, Andy Doan pisze:
On 10/16/2012 07:47 PM, Michael Hudson-Doyle wrote:
We're going to be talking about test case management in LAVA at the Connect. I've brain-dumped some of my thoughts here:
https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/LAVA/Specs/TestCaseManagementComments welcome. But if all you do is read it before coming to the session, that's enough for me :-)
It feels good just to see this all listed concisely.
I think we probably need one other section in the page like "testdef organization". This would describe any rules we have file filenames or directory hierarchies needed by the git/bzr testdef repo so that we'll know how to import things.
Incidentally that's something we may collaborate on.
Yeah, so how does checkbox deal with this? I guess it doesn't quite have the concept of remote users submitted requests that jobs are run? (i.e. checkbox is more dispatcher than scheduler in lava terminology).
We have largely the same problem but in different context (there are different internal users).
Checkbox has the concept of "whitelists" which basically specify the test scenario. Each item in the whitelist is a "job" (full test definition) that can use various checkbox "plugins" (like shell, manual and many others that I'm not familiar with). Checkbox then transforms the whitelist (resolving dependencies and things like that) and executes the tests much like dispatcher would.
There are several use cases that are currently broken (as downstream users use checkbox to do their specialized testing) and we're looking for solutions that could help us solve that. We have not made up our minds really as the problem is equally technical as social and no patch will magically fix both sides.
One of the proposals would be to build a pypi-like directory of tests and use that as a base for namespacing (first-come first-served name allocation). I'm not entirely sure this would help to solve the problem but it's something that, if available, could give us another vector.
I wonder if checkbox's rfc822ish format would be better than JSON for test interchange...
Probably although it's still imperfect and suffers from binary deficiency.
What I'd like to see in practice is a web service that is free-for-all that can hold test meta data. I believe that as we go test meta data will formalize and at some point it may become possible to run lava-test test from checkbox and checkbox job in lava (given appropriate adapters on both sides) merely by specifying the name of the test.
Initially it could be a simple RESTful interface based on a dumb HTTP server serving files from a tree structure. This would allow us to try moving some of the experimental meta-data there and build the client parts. If the idea gains traction it could grow from there.
Some considerations:
1) Some tests have to be private. I don't know how to solve that in namespaces. Some of the ideas that come to mind is .private. namespace that is explicitly non-global and can be provided by a local "test definition repository"
2) It should probably be schema free, serving simple rfc822 files with python-like classifiers (Test::Platform::Android anyone?) as this will allow free experimentation
3) It should (must?) have pypi-like version support so that a test can be updated but the old definition is never lost.
4) It probably does not have to be the download server as anyone can host tests themselves. Just meta-data would be kept there. (For small tests that may be enough but I can envision tests with external code and resources)
How can I participate in that meeting?
I imagine the google+ arrangments will be similar.
I've subscribed to the relevant blueprint now.
Thanks ZK