Re: [Announce] Linux Test Project

[Larry McVoy]

I'm a huge fan of this idea.  We have a very simple, but effective, test
harness in BitKeeper.  You are welcome to it if you want it.  All we do is
have directory full of "t.files" which are shell scripts.  There is a 
setup program called "doit" which clears out /tmp/.regression-$USER,
sets up the environment, goes to that directory, and then runs the 
script.  If the script exits 0, it does the next one, else it stops.

We've got 12,000 lines of shell scripts we use to test BitKeeper and it
has been priceless.  In theory, we don't fix a bug without adding a 
regression, in practice that is true about 80% of the time.  We're quite
happy that it is that high.  The reason it is that high is that once the
harness is there, you can create a new test like so:

cat > t/t.small
echo $N Try wrapping and unwrapping some data .......................$NL
ls / > data
bk uuwrap < data > data.uu
bk unuuwrap < data.uu | cmp -s - data
if [ $? != 0 ]; then echo Data is different when unwrapped; exit 1; fi
echo OK
^D

I strongly urge you to do the work to create a similar simple harness.
If it is trivial for people to create tests, they _might_ create them.
If it is anything other than trivial, it's just another good idea that
won't happen.

If I get to Linux World I'll look you up, otherwise you can ping me
for the test harness.

On Tue, Aug 08, 2000 at 03:06:28PM -0500, Nathan Straz wrote:
> SGI would like to announce the Linux Test Project.  The goal of this
> project is to create a formalized test system for the Linux kernel.
> 
> We have released a set of 96 tests on the project's website
> (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ltp/).  These tests exercise file systems
> and system calls and can be used for stress testing or sanity tests. 
> 
> We would like to discuss the following topics with the community.
> 
>  - The testing philosophy that is most important to the kernel
>    developers.  What approach best fits the development process?
>    Regression?  Functional?  Stress?  Performance?
> 
>  - What is needed immediately?  Building a test suite for the kernel is
>    going to take time.  What tests or tools are most important?
> 
>  - We need to plan a development road map that works with the Linux
>    kernel development road map. 
> 
> We are hoping to hold an unscheduled BOF at LinuxWorld on Wednesday.
> Aaron Laffin and Richard Logan will be there to discuss these issues.
> If you are interested in testing and are attending LinuxWorld, please
> keep an eye open for our BOF.
> 
> Linux Test Project  http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ltp/
> LTP Mailing list    [e-mail]
> 
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