[U-Boot-Users] [RFC PATCH] Add u-boot command regression tests.

gvb.uboot
2007-11-28T02:32:08Z

Robert Schwebel wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 03:09:35PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
>> in message <474ACEEC.1080801@ge.com> you wrote:
>>> I've used tk/tcl/expect and am not wild about them. The older scripting
>>> languages are so.... 70s. ;-) I haven't used python much, but I've come
>>> to like it a lot, kind of a rational perl. :-/
>> I think I know what you mean.
>
> Same here, we are through all these iterations as well:
>
> - we've written a test suite in python with xml specs (oo design, but
> very complex in the end, without the advantages we expected from
> an oo language)
>
> - expect/tcl based test suite; causes brain cancer because of tcl
>
> Now we do the u-boot tests/scripting with the tcl/expect stuff and all
> other Linux test suites in normal shell scripts, remote-controlled via
> ssh.
>
> While the latter one has finally turned out to be a good way to write
> test cases, we think about adding something like a dbus module to
> u-boot-v2, which would make it possible to do real and well defined RPC
> between a host and u-boot.
>
> rsc

Hmmm, I seem to have hit a resonance.

More background trivia... my weekend experiment was using python-serial.
I chose that and used it to capture whole serial transactions (waited
until it appeared no more serial characters were being sent) so I could
then use python regexp matching to do simpler, more elaborate, and more
sane (yes, all three) pattern matching than what I was able to do with
expect due to expect breaking the serial stream in semi-random time
based chunks.

Another option that I have not experimented with is a python-based expect:
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/pexpect/>

Best regards,
gvb