[Automated-testing] [LTP] [RFC] [PATCH] lib: Add support for test tags

[Tim.Bird at sony.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cyril Hrubis 
> 
> Hi!
> > > So, only way to get metadata for tools is to run the test
> > > with -q on supported target? (since I assume when
> > > TST_TEST_TCONF branch hits, there won't be any data).
> > >
> > > Would there be any benefit to having metadata in a (json)
> > > file from the start? Negative would be likely duplicating
> > > things like "needs_root". Positive is we could check for
> > > errors/typos during build time.
> >
> > I'd like to see a way to extract this data without having to
> > run the test as well.  That way test frameworks using LTP
> > could extract the data and handle test scheduling,
> > test dependencies, etc. without having to build or execute
> > the code.  In the case of Fuego, test dependencies are analyzed
> > on a separate machine from the one running the test.  Also,
> > we try to process some dependencies prior to building the test.
> 
> What I had in mind was some additional database build step where
> all tests would be executed with -q parameter on the target machine
> which would create a big structured file with all the metadata. So first
> thing before any test would be executed would be a script that would
> check if there is a database file or not and and if there is none it
> would build it, then we can get the database from the target machine
> and the test runner can make use of that.
> 
> This process has to be either part of the LTP build or has to be
> executed before first testrun anyways, sice there is no other way
> to keep the data in sync with the binaries.

OK - I think we could make that work in Fuego.

Is any of the information you are encoding architecture-specific?

It might be convenient for Fuego to build LTP on x86_64 to extract
this data, and then build the actual test binaries for the target architecture
in a separate step.  But that wouldn't work if the x86_64
binaries gave different '-q' results than the (say) ARM binaries.

> 
> > One mechanism for storing the data would be a separate json
> > file, but you could also embed the information in the source
> > using some regularized markup (json or something simpler)
> > that could be handled both in-source (for your -q operation),
> > or by an external scanner/converter.
> 
> Actually I've started to think that this may be the answer, if we manage
> to encode the metadata into C string as well as into some structured
> form we can have test description as well as some of the metadata
> available both at the runtime as well as in a format that could be
> parsed without compiling the test.
> 
> But there are drawbacks, I do not think that it's sane to encode if test
> requires root or not, or if it needs a block device in some kind of
> markup text. I think that it's mutch better when it's encoded in the
> tst_test structure as it is now.
If there's a standard way of expressing this that can be reliably grepp'ed,
I don't think everything needs to be in a structured form.
As long as it's not too difficult to write a parser, and there are
some conventions that naturally keep the data parsable, I think having
the metadata in C strings is fine.

For example, "grep needs_root -R * | grep -v Binary" shows a list which
is pretty clear.   Maybe it's missing some instances, due to a program setting
setting this field in a weird way,  but I kind of doubt it.
(This field is usually declared statically like this, right?
It would be harder to parse if needs_root is assigned at runtime.)

 -- Tim