[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Thoughts on Debian quality, including automated testing



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi> writes:

>     Automated testing of program functionality
>     ==========================================
>
> Automatic testing needs to happen in various contexts:
>
>     * When the package has been built, but before it is uploaded.
>       This is similar to testing with lintian, linda, and piuparts.
>       The difference from build-time tests is that the tests are
>       run when the package is installed onto a system (possibly a
>       chroot or a virtual system).

For this task, you might find schroot(1) useful.  It's a means of
accessing chroot environments, but it supports LVM snapshots as one
method.  This is a very quick method to create and destroy a test
environment (on my system, 2 seconds to create and 5 to destroy).
This is quite a low overhead compared with the alternatives (untarring
a tarfile, or copying a filesystem, or running cdebootstrap), and the
low cleanup overhead is also advantageous.

I also hope to add support for Xen on top of LVM snapshots as well.
I'm just waiting for Xen to work on powerpc so I can actually use it.
If anyone is interested who would like this, please get in touch.

sbuild is also partially integrated with sbuild (the Debian package),
though I haven't added session handling for LVM snapshots yet.  Once
tests become standardised with a debian/rules target, it would be
fairly simple to add this to sbuild.

[schroot has received some minor criticism for being written in C
using GLib/GObject.  I have however spent the last week converting it
to C++, and I'm just finishing that up now.]


Regards,
Roger

- -- 
Roger Leigh
                Printing on GNU/Linux?  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
                Debian GNU/Linux        http://www.debian.org/
                GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848.  Please sign and encrypt your mail.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8+ <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/>

iD8DBQFDqS5QVcFcaSW/uEgRAvZUAKCcIgh8QL33CEJO24/A9669KkvF6ACgpYdC
2s5xPCXcfUkYNZZIRCFY2so=
=huA9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



Reply to: