Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 11/11] test-vmstate: add test case to verify we don't change VMState

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

On 03/22/2011 07:16 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> We've had lots of issues surrounding live migration breaking.  This is because
> we haven't had a good way to validate that what we're migrating isn't changing
> underneath of us.
>
> This test works by first converting the in-tree schema to C source as a string.
> This is built into the test case.  The test case will then query QEMU for the
> current schema.
>
> It converts both strings to QObjects via the JSON parser and then does a
> recursive diff.  Unlike a simple diff command, this lets us say exactly what you
> did to break migration.  For instance, you get error messages like:
>
>    You broke migration by changing the type of field 'par' in device 'cpu',
>    version 1 from 'uint32' to 'uint64'.
>
> It only covers devices that support VMState and it currently doesn't look at
> subsections yet.
>
> The in-tree schema needs to be updated whenever migration changes but this ends
> up being a very nice way to ensure that we're reviewing migration protocol
> changes.
>
> The test case is built in the default build, and can be run by `make check'.

This test takes a disturbingly long time to run considering what it's 
doing (~3 seconds).  Turns out, the JSON parser is horribly slow because 
it allocates and frees memory faster than a hummingbird on steroids.

I have a local patch that removes this and afterwards the test runs in 
just 70ms.  I'll send that fix out tomorrow.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori