Re: [LTP] [PATCH 00/36] Remove UCLINUX from LTP

Petr Vorel
2024-01-03T12:40:37Z

Hi Geert, Cyril, all,

Geert, first, thank you for Cc all the other lists.
For anybody from those lists, we talk about:
https://lore.kernel.org/ltp/20240103015240.1065284-1-pvorel@suse.cz/

> Hi!
> > I am not sure I agree with this series.
> > Removing support for UCLINUX from LTP is almost a guarantee for
> > not noticing when more breakage is introduced.

> > How exactly is UCLINUX broken in LTP?

> As far as we know noone is using it and nobody is maintaing it for a
> decade, so it's bitrotting and we do not have manpower to fix it, or
> rather we do not want to invest the scarcely limited resources we have
> into something that is niche at best. We asked repeatedly if anyone want
> to invest time into keeping it alive, but nobody answered the call so
> far and I doubt that it will happen at this point.

Also, UCLINUX was used in tests which used the legacy LTP API, which was buggy.
We slowly rewrite tests into new API [1], which is more reliable and do cleanup
and bug fixes during test rewrites. But because nobody stand to maintain UCLINUX
support, it's not in the new API. Thus we have actively deleted it's support
during the rewrite in past years.

I wonder myself if anybody is even using LTP on UCLINUX platforms. Nearly 25% of
the syscalls tests use fork(), thus will not work on UCLINUX. First tests were
rewritten in 2016 (first release in 20160510) and nobody complained.

All tests C based tests (both new and legacy API):
$ git grep -l -e 'include .tst_test.h' -e 'include .test.h' testcases/ |wc -l
1494

Tests, which use fork(), i.e. not working in UCLINUX:
$ git grep -l '\.forks_child.*1' testcases/ |wc -l
334

Kind regards,
Petr

[1] https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/C-Test-API