Re: Linux Testing Microconference at LPC

[Brendan Higgins]

On Wed, May 22, 2019 at 9:55 PM Knut Omang <knut.omang@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Sorry for the delayed reply.

>
> On Wed, 2019-05-22 at 14:02 -0700, Brendan Higgins wrote:
> > On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 08:36:49PM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 04:44:19PM -0600, shuah wrote:
> > > > Hi Sasha and Dhaval,
> > > >
> > > > On 4/11/19 11:37 AM, Dhaval Giani wrote:
> > > > > Hi Folks,
> > > > >
> > > > > This is a call for participation for the Linux Testing microconference
> > > > > at LPC this year.
> > > > >
> > > > > For those who were at LPC last year, as the closing panel mentioned,
> > > > > testing is probably the next big push needed to improve quality. From
> > > > > getting more selftests in, to regression testing to ensure we don't
> > > > > break realtime as more of PREEMPT_RT comes in, to more stable distros,
> > > > > we need more testing around the kernel.
> > > > >
> > > > > We have talked about different efforts around testing, such as fuzzing
> > > > > (using syzkaller and trinity), automating fuzzing with syzbot, 0day
> > > > > testing, test frameworks such as ktests, smatch to find bugs in the
> > > > > past. We want to push this discussion further this year and are
> > > > > interested in hearing from you what you want to talk about, and where
> > > > > kernel testing needs to go next.
> > > > >
> > > > > Please let us know what topics you believe should be a part of the
> > > > > micro conference this year.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks!
> > > > > Sasha and Dhaval
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > A talk on KUnit from Brendan Higgins will be good addition to this
> > > > Micro-conference. I am cc'ing Brendan on this thread.
> > > >
> > > > Please consider adding it.
> > >
> > > FWIW, the topic of unit tests is already on the schedule. There seems to
> > > be two different sub-topics here (kunit vs KTF) so there's a good
> > > discussion to be had here on many levels.
> >
> > Cool, so do we just want to go with that? Have a single slot for KUnit
> > and KTF combined?
> >
> > We can each present our work up to this point; maybe offer some
> > background and rationale on why we made the decision we have and then we
> > can have some moderated discussion on, pros, cons, next steps, etc?
>
> I definitely had KTF and KUnit in mind when proposing this topic.

Awesome!

> If you recall from the last time we discussed unit testing, each slot is
> fairly limited in time. My plan for the intro for discussion is to

Yeah, as per Steven's comment, I also submitted a refereed talk for
more detailed stuff.

> itemize some of the distinct goals we try to achieve with our frameworks and have a
> discussion based on that. In light of the discussion around your patch sets,

Sounds good to me. One thing I would like to talk about is maybe
trying to classify different categories of tests (unit vs. integration
vs. end-to-end), where they fit into the Linux kernel, how
prescriptivist should we be in categorization and what a test is for,
etc. I think this has been a point of disagreement/confusion on my
patchsets as well.

> one topic is also the question of whether a common API would be useful/desired,
> and whether we can "capture" a short namespace for that.

I am not opposed. This could potentially tie in to what kind of test
something is as I mentioned above. In anycase, sounds like there is a
lot of room for good discussion.

Thanks!