Re: Purpose of gen_tar

[Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>]

On 10/24/23 12:34, Bird, Tim wrote:
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message----- From: Marcos Paulo de Souza
>> <mpdesouza@suse.de>
>> 
> ...
>> Per the kselftests documentation[1], the gen_tar target is used to
>> package the tests to run "on different systems". But what if the
>> different system has different libraries/library versions? Wouldn't
>> it be a problem?
>> 
> ...
>> 
>> While the current approach can work when the selftests rely solely
>> on shell scripts(cpufreq, kexec), those who compile userspace
>> binaries (cgroup, alsa, sched, ...) may not work.
>> 
>> Am I missing something? Is gen_tar only meant to copy the tests to
>> be run on systems with the same libraries or with the libraries
>> with the exactly the same version?
> 
> gen_tar was originally intended (I believe) for developers doing
> cross-compilation. The SDK used for cross-compilation of the
> executables should handle issues such as library versions (and of
> course, CPU architecture and endian-ness).
> 
> I've never done cross-compilation for the same architecture, so I
> don't know how that would work, but I presume there is some way to
> compile code for another system with the same architecture but
> different libraries.

Right. gen_tar was intended to be used when a user wants to generate tar
archive of all the complied tests/installed tests. Running kselftest_install
creates a directory with artifacts necessary to execute tests.

This functionality is now part of the selftests Makefile - gen_tar target will
do the same.

thanks,
-- Shuah