Re: [Autotest] [PATCH] [RFC] KVM test: Major control file cleanup

[Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues <lmr@redhat.com>]

On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 08:54 -0500, Ryan Harper wrote:
> * Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues <lmr@redhat.com> [2009-10-28 14:48]:
> > Ryan, Michael:
> > 
> > I absolutely agree that the ability to debug stuff is important, but
> > the ability to make things straightforward to use from the web
> > interface or cli is also important. A longer term goal is to have our
> > test farm and make any developer able to schedule a job on the test
> > farm easily and conveniently.
> > 
> > Having the dictionaries generated on the job debug directory seems
> > like a good compromise to me. Also we can come up with a smart way of
> > parsing the config file generated by a given control file in a similar
> > way we do today with kvm_config.py, it shouldn't be that hard to do
> > it... (I hope I won't burn my tongue with this statement).
> 
> If I'm understanding things, we are talking about moving the large body
> of kvm_tests.cfg test definitions, guest definitions into a "library",
> and then moving the requested test config (bottom on kvm_tests.cfg) into
> the control file itself which means the autotest webui would be able to
> control which tests get run;

That is precisely my idea!

> I like this idea very well.  My concern
> that I mentioned is that as you edit the "library" it can be difficult
> to ensure you described exactly which set of tests on which guests you
> want to run and kvm_config.py is invaluable in the process of getting it
> right.

Yes, very valid concern. Let's try to address it.

> Why not have kvm_config.py , or some other wrapper generate a
> "kvm_tests.cfg" file dynamically from the "library" and the strings from
> the control file? 

That's one idea, the concern is that the code to do that might become
ugly. But I will give it a try.

> That way we could still debug configuration via
> kvm_config.py?  I much perfer this over queueing up jobs in the webiu,
> waiting for it to run, checking the results in the DEBUG dir, adjusting,
> repeat.

Ok, I will go after this solution.

Thanks for your comments Ryan,

Lucas