[Freeipa-devel] Thoughts on tests (unit, integration, self-test)

[Rich Megginson]

Rob Crittenden wrote:
> Jason Gerard DeRose wrote:
>> This is a brain dump on all things related to the freeIPA tests included
>> in its source tree...
>>
>> One of my big goals with the Python code I've written for v2 is to make
>> freeIPA easier to test (especially easier to quickly test as you code,
>> while running everything in-tree).  This is a challenging problem
>> because running full blown freeIPA requires some fairly invasive
>> configuration changes... you don't want to make these changes to your
>> workstation unless you're actually part of an IPA realm, and if you're
>> part of an IPA realm, you don't want to run these tests against (and
>> possibly break) a production realm.
>
> [ snip ]
>
> I generally agree with this approach, particularly when it comes to 
> separating the integration tests from the unit tests. I like the idea 
> of selftests but I haven't yet wrapped my mind around it. I keep 
> thinking of Jurassic park where you are only testing what you are 
> expecting and therefore all tests pass (even though there are raptors 
> about to bite you).
>
> I think we should have 2 types of integration testing too: lite and 
> full. Lite testing would utilize the python-litexml.py script and a 
> full test would test against Apache running the XML-RPC module. In 
> theory they should work the same way, this will confirm the theory. It 
> should be as simple as changing a config option on the client so 
> running one vs the other should be straightforward. It might be nice 
> to be able to run this with a remote IPA server as well as a local one 
> too.
>
> So I think you are on the right track here, we just need to flesh out 
> what the SelfTest might look like. Would it essentially be one test 
> per-method or would we be able to fake negative testing too (to test 
> throwing exceptions)?
>
> I gather you envision this as separate make-test scripts (or make 
> targets)?
>
> I'm a little less jaded when it comes to setting up an environment. I 
> drop and re-create my IPA server on an almost daily basis it seems 
> testing one thing or another. Running in a VM is a good idea though 
> simply because IPA is so invasive in overwriting config files.
Another sort of half-way option - using mock to run tests.  mock is 
great if you need a full-blown OS file system with your packages 
installed and you also need root access.  mock can run any rhel or 
fedora operating system (even 32-bit and 64-bit on a 64-bit machine).  
mock is much more lightweight than running a VM.  The only problem is 
network connections e.g. you cannot have two directory servers running 
at the same time both listening to port 389 - there are probably other 
gotchas as well with hostnames (but some sort of /etc/hosts hack in the 
chroot might be possible).

I have run the directory server acceptance test suite inside mock, 
including such tests as 4 way MMR.  It's pretty nifty to be able to use 
mock to build and test packages in F-8, F-9, F-10, and even rhel 
platforms, from a single machine with no VM.
>
> Great start.
>
> rob
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freeipa-devel mailing list
> Freeipa-devel at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/freeipa-devel

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 3258 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/freeipa-devel/attachments/20090219/4c102e9c/attachment.bin>