Re: [PATCH v7 0/4] Introduce first exeter based test infrastructure

[Stefano Brivio <sbrivio@redhat.com>]

On Fri, 5 Sep 2025 16:42:58 +1000
David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 05, 2025 at 11:35:53AM +1000, David Gibson wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 05, 2025 at 01:14:33AM +0200, Stefano Brivio wrote:  
> > > On Thu,  4 Sep 2025 12:50:00 +1000
> > > David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au> wrote:
> > >   
> > > > Here's a new approach to building passt tests with exeter.  This new
> > > > one no longer uses Avocado in the default case, although it would
> > > > still be possible to manually run the exeter based tests with Avocado.
> > > > 
> > > > For now this only does simple tests, to show how the integration could
> > > > work.  It adds some new trivial "smoke tests" and converts the linter
> > > > and build checks to exeter.  More complex tests will require building
> > > > the tunbridge library we've discussed.  A lot of the work for that
> > > > already exists in my earlier exeter test series, but it will need some
> > > > rework to split it into a separate component.
> > > > 
> > > > v7:
> > > >  * Use "exetool list" rather than "--list" directly to get test manifest.
> > > >  * Update Makefiles to automatically update exeter sources as necessary.
> > > >  * Update series cover letter removing some outdated information.  
> > > 
> > > I was about to apply this, but then realised that the usual build test
> > > links at https://passt.top/#ci disappeared, see also
> > > https://passt.top/builds/latest/web/ci.js.  
> > 
> > Huh, that's weird.
> >   
> > > I didn't really investigate
> > > yet, we're missing something equivalent to the "test" directive.  
> > 
> > We shouldn't be.  exeter() calls status_test_{start,ok,fail} much like
> > test().  
> 
> Ah.. but I didn't call video_link, like test_one() did.  Which
> explains why the new tests weren't getting links... but not why it
> broke the existing ones.

No, no, existing ones are fine. Just the *build* test links were
missing. It all works now (with v8).

> Well, I've put that in, and ci.js looks sane to me, but I don't really
> know how that video stuff works.  I'll send v8.

It's write-only code but it's conceptually simple: we record the start
timestamp (based on /proc/uptime) of each test file and add that,
together with a key, to a JavaScript array, video_cilinks.

One 'a' HTML element (link) is also generated for each test file, with
an 'id' attribute matching that key, and when you click on that link, a
listener will look into video_cilink and use the matching start
timestamp as seek time for AsciinemaPlayer.

> > > If I
> > > recall correctly, that was working in v5, but I'm not sure why. I still
> > > need to look into this, unless you figure it out meanwhile.  
> > 
> > Right, you said v5 worked.  Hrm.... one of the main differences since
> > v5 is getting the descriptions, which *are* used as the parameter to
> > status_test_start.  Could the descriptions be using some character we
> > weren't before and we're missing an escape somewhere?  Not seeing an
> > obvious spot.

I guess I didn't actually recall correctly, or didn't check those
links, because it couldn't have worked in v5 either.

-- 
Stefano