Re: "test in a box"

[Stefano Brivio <sbrivio@redhat.com>]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2024 13:42:17 +1000
David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au> wrote:

> Hi Jon (and others),
> 
> Are you still having trouble getting the passt tests to work?  I
> mentioned at some point in the past that I had an experimental "test
> in a box" script which set up some namespaces to run the tests
> independently of the host's networking setup.  I just rebased that
> onto the current tree and discovered that it worked better than I
> recalled.  I was able to run the full test suite except for the
> performance tests - I didn't try those, so I don't know if they work.
> 
> I pushed the rebased version, along with some other local patches I
> tend to use while developing at:
> 	https://gitlab.com/dgibson/passt/-/tree/testbase?ref_type=heads
> 
> To use:
> 
> 1) The test "assets" must be built and up to date, first, so in
>    passt/tests run:
>    	$ make
> 2) In passt/tests run
> 	$ ./testinabox.sh
> 
> Hope that's useful to someone.

Actually, it would be generally useful to have this "on" in the tests
by default, either as a wrapper or integrated in a different way.

I maintain Debian and Fedora packages but I can only run manual tests
on them, and other packagers have the same kind of issue. In particular,
the lack of an autopkgtest possibility for Debian turns a release soft
freeze into a hard freeze:
  https://release.debian.org/bookworm/freeze_policy.html#hard

I know, the plan is to eventually replace this test suite altogether,
but your script is small and rather inviting...

-- 
Stefano