Bug#987674: RFP: checkbox -- The checkbox project coordinates various testing and certification activities in Ubuntu
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
* Package name : checkbox
Version : ?
Upstream Author : Checkbox developers https://launchpad.net/~checkbox-dev
* URL : https://launchpad.net/checkbox-project
* License : GPLv3
Programming Lang: Python
Description : The checkbox project coordinates various testing and certification activities in Ubuntu
https://checkbox.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Checkbox is a flexible test automation software. It’s the main tool
used in Ubuntu Certification program.
You can use checkbox without any modification to check if your system
is behaving correctly or you can develop your own set of tests to
check your needs. See Checkbox tutorials for details.
Checkbox optionally generates test reports in different formats (JSON,
HTML, etc.) that can be used to easily share the results of a test
session.
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This is an interesting program. It seems like Ubuntu has been using
this in their certification program for ages, yet it has never come
onto my radar, even though I've been working on a similar project
(called stressant, packaged in Debian) for years as well.
Stressant is much less fine-tuned, and flexible, so I'm thinking of
abandoning it in favor of making an effort to package this into Debian
directly.
This could presumably be packaged under the Python team, but I can't
help but think we could collaborate with Ubuntu on that one somehow,
or just treat it as an upstream and regularly import their
stuff. Confusingly, it seems the package has shipped only in Ubuntu
Xenial:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=checkbox
That's because they switch to snap-only packaging. The package was, in
fact, available in Debian (stretch) but was removed because of that
switch:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=926953
I still think this would be a useful addition to Debian, regardless of
upstream's policy on packaging. Maybe water has passed under the
bridge enough that we can make a .deb out of this again? Or is this a
waste of time?
My primary use case for this would be to bundle it in something like
grml so I can do burn-ins on new boxes easily. It seems it would be
much harder to do this from a snap than a .deb.
a.
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