Re: venv for python qtest bits? (was: Re: [PATCH 11/12] acpi/tests/bits: add README file for bits qtests)

[Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>]

On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 at 14:23, Ani Sinha <ani@anisinha.ca> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2022 at 6:25 PM Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:
> > This proposed biosbits test also involves a considerable download.
>
> I do not think 50 MB is "considerable" . Last time I tried to run
> avocado tests, my laptop ran out of disk space!

I think 50MB is pretty big. It might be smaller than some other
avocado tests, but it's not exactly the "no binary involved"
that most qtests are.

> > The test is said to be irrelevant for anyone except those working
> > on a fairly narrow set of QEMU firmware related bits.
>
> Well ok that is just a bad argument. You can say the same thing for
> most qtests. In fact, that is why most qtetes can run directly simply
> by passing QTEST_QEMU_BINARY in the environment. No need to go through
> make check. Same with the bits test. It can be run directly.

'make check' is generally the small, fast, no-binary-blobs tests.
Very few 'make check' tests even run code in the guest.

> So by the same
> > rationale we shouldn't impose that burden on everyone working on
> > QEMU by having it in qtest.
>
> So why burden everyone by having bios-tables-test when it only affects
> acpi/smbios developers?

Because it's small and fast and doesn't have a binary blob to download.

There are definitely some awkwardnesses with 'check-avocado',
but we should work on fixing those, not use them as a reason
to refuse to put tests into the avocado tests if that's where
they fit best.

-- PMM