Dpkg testing automation

[Esteban Manchado Velázquez <zoso@foton.es>]

Hi all,

   Some months ago Wichert asked for help in unittesting and all. I don't know
if anyone else replied, but I did reply and somehow managed to look at some
testing alternatives.

   This message is just to let you all know that _someone_ is working on dpkg
automated testing, so if anyone out there is willing to help, share ideas,
code, or whatever, go ahead ;-)

   The basic idea is as follows:

   * Use dejagnu for testing. I really don't like Tcl very much, but it seemed
     the best idea to use dejagnu, if only to be able to easily integrate
     different testing "styles" (C unittesting, interactive testing, script
     testing, etc.)
   * Write Tcl scripts so that given a "type of test" (dpkg-parsechangelog
     testing, C unittesting, etc.), adding more tests is just a matter of
     dropping files in some specific-to-that-test directory.

Currently I only have a basic sketch. I would like the interested people to
send me comments, or to discuss the testing framework a little in the mailing
list, if you have other ideas.

   You can see the current work (I'm enhancing/cleaning it up, so expect
updates) in http://people.debian.org/~zoso/stuff/dpkg-tests/ (in the form of a
tla compressed changeset against the latest devel version, as explained
there).

   Regards,

-- 
Esteban Manchado Velázquez <zoso@foton.es> - http://www.foton.es
EuropeSwPatentFree - http://EuropeSwPatentFree.hispalinux.es