Re: [RFC] Regression testing framework for the kernel
- From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 05:44:12 -0400
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 11:05:56PM +0200, Jack Stone wrote:
Hi All,
I would like to suggest a new framework to test the kernel. This
framework would have the following goals:
* Only runs at build time and has no effect on running kernel
I don't think we should ever run tests at build time unconditionally.
If we want to integrate it with make it should at least be a separate
make check.
The best way of acheiving this that I have thought of it to compile the
kernel source in question and
to link it with special framework files. These files would serve two
purposes: to provide the main function
of the program and to provide the missing symbols for the kernel code.
This would allow the replacement of
certain functions in the code. For example replacing the spin_lock and
spin_unlock functions would allow the
locking behavior to be checked.
That's going to be a lot of stubs if we want to have a wide coverage.
Then again people are alredy doing this in various places, either with
the code in-tree but not easily buildable or out of tree, so having
all this in a common place and a common test driver would be a defintive
improvement. The right approach would probably be to add stubs on a
as-needed basis instead of trying to provide full coverage.
Usage examples:
* Test the behavior of a device driver
As various kernel functions can be overridden a test case could
be written to simulate a given device and
check that there are no regressions in the driver
Not sure that is a good use. If we want to emulate hardware I think
we're better of using qemu for it and run a normal kernel under it.
* Regression testing
Any time a regression is found and fixed in the kernel a test
case could be written to check that the
regression does not reoccur later on.
I think that is the primary use case. Regresion-tests for library-ish
code that doesn't require much global state.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: [RFC] Regression testing framework for the kernel
- From: Jack Stone
- Re: [RFC] Regression testing framework for the kernel
- Prev by Date: Re: [PATCH] x86: read apic id if it is not acpi_lapic -v2
- Next by Date: Re: [RFC] fiemap tester
- Previous by thread: [PATCH] XCEP PXA255 Processor Board
- Next by thread: Re: [RFC] Regression testing framework for the kernel
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
