1: [[!meta title="Kyua: An introduction for NetBSD users"]]
2: [[!toc ]]
3:
4: The [Automated Testing Framework](ATF), or ATF for short, is a software
5: package composed of two parts: the *ATF libraries* and the *ATF tools*.
6: The ATF libraries provide a toolkit for developers to implement test cases
7: in a variety of languages: C, C++ and POSIX shell. The ATF tools provide
8: the utilities to run such test cases in an automated way and to generate
9: reports.
10:
11: The ATF tools have some
12: [design and, particularly, implementation problems](http://mail-index.netbsd.org/atf-devel/2010/11/13/msg000206.html)
13: that make it hard to add support for highly desired features such as
14: parallel execution of test cases, unified dashboards covering multiple test
15: runs ([like this one](http://releng.netbsd.org/test-results.html)), the
16: ability to run legacy or third-party test programs that do not use the ATF
17: libraries, and the ability to tune the timeout of test cases.
18:
19: *Kyua's current goal is to reimplement _only_ the ATF tools* while
20: maintaining backwards compatibility with the tests written with the ATF
21: libraries (i.e. with the NetBSD test suite).
22:
23: Because Kyua is a replacement of some ATF components, the end goal is to
24: integrate Kyua into the NetBSD base system (just as ATF is) and remove the
25: deprecated ATF components. Removing the deprecated components will allow
26: us to make the above-mentioned improvements to Kyua, as well as many
27: others, without having to deal with the obsolete ATF code base.
28: *Discussing how and when this transition might happen is out of the scope
29: of this document at the moment.*
30:
31: This page provides instructions on how to use Kyua with the current NetBSD
32: test suite so that you can experiment with the tool, familiarize yourself
33: with it and provide feedback early on.
34:
35: # Main differences (aka "what to expect")
36:
37: As of version 0.5, Kyua has (or is supposed to have) feature parity with
38: the ATF tools. That said, having feature parity does not imply that they
39: are the same. This section outlines a few of the differences that you
40: should be aware of before continuing.
41:
42: ## Results database
43:
44: Kyua collects the results of the execution of a test suite into an SQLite
45: database. User-friendly reports are later generated by extracting data
46: from this same database.
47:
48: In ATF, the results of the execution were written to an internal format
49: that only atf-report could understand. Despite of the database, Kyua still
50: maintains the separation of "tests execution" from "report generation".
51:
52: The contents of the database are immutable and incremental. This means
53: that, in the future, the Kyua tools will be able to provide historical data
54: for particular test cases, or for whole test runs (which is what other
55: NetBSD developers have ended up implementing multiple times outside of ATF
56: because the framework did not provide such functionality by itself).
57:
58: ## Support for multiple test interfaces
59:
60: Kyua has support for different "test interfaces", which means that Kyua can
61: execute test programs written using different paradigms and collect their
62: results into a single report. At the moment, two interfaces are supported:
63:
64: * The "atf" interface provides compatibility with those test programs that
65: use the ATF libraries. This is the only interface currently used by the
66: NetBSD test suite, as there is no way to run any other test program in an
67: automated manner.
68:
69: * The "plain" interface permits the execution of legacy test programs that
70: do not use any testing library. Such test programs are those that just
71: return 0 or non-0 to indicate the success or failure of the test
72: (respectively). This feature will allow the NetBSD test suite to
73: transparently execute third-party test suites (such as the IPF or GCC
74: test suites) without having to implement ATF-based wrappers. It will
75: also lower the barrier of entry to writing test programs for NetBSD, as
76: using the ATF libraries will become optional.
77:
78: ## Lua configuration files
79:
80: Kyua has two kind of configuration files: the Kyuafiles, which are the
81: files shipped with a test suite that describe what test programs need to be
82: run; and the user configuration files, which specify the run-time settings
83: of Kyua and the test suites. ATF had this same split of configuration
84: files, and they were written in a custom language, with a custom parser.
85:
86: The Kyua configuration files are all Lua scripts. The major advantage of
87: this at the moment is that their syntax will be familiar to end users, and
88: that the parser for these files is well-tested. In the future, the use of
89: Lua will allow the implementation of more-intelligent test (and maybe even
90: build) scripts.
91:
92: ## Heavier code base
93:
94: If you take a look at the Kyua distribution file, you may notice that it is
95: about the same size as the distribution file of ATF, yet Kyua does not
96: currently replace the ATF libraries. This may be surprising because it
97: seems to imply that the codebase of Kyua is bigger because it "just"
98: reimplements atf-run and atf-report: i.e. by just reimplementing parts of
99: ATF, it is already as big as the whole of ATF.
100:
101: This is true, for two reasons.
102:
103: The first is that Kyua is more featureful and flexible: the features
104: outlined above have a cost in terms of implementation, and the codebase of
105: Kyua is more carefully crafted to allow for later growth. In particular,
106: all OS-specific details have been abstracted for easier portability, and
107: the SQLite and Lua libraries have been wrapped for safety.
108:
109: The second is that Kyua is much better tested (which is very important for
110: a software package that you will rely on to validate your own software!).
111: To give you some numbers, ATF 0.16 contains around 400 test cases for both
112: atf-run and atf-report while Kyua 0.5 contains around 1100 test cases.
113:
114: # Components
115:
116: Kyua, as a project, is made up of a variety of components (which *include*
117: ATF, because the ATF libraries are *not* being rewritten). All of these
118: components exist in pkgsrc, and are:
119:
120: * pkgsrc/devel/atf-libs: The C, C++ and POSIX shell libraries provided by
121: ATF. These are *NOT* meant to be replaced by Kyua.
122:
123: * pkgsrc/devel/atf: The ATF tools, namely atf-run and atf-report. These
124: are deprecated and this package should eventually disappear.
125:
126: * pkgsrc/devel/kyua-cli: The Kyua command-line interface, which provides a
127: superset of the functionality of atf-run and atf-report.
128:
129: * pkgsrc/devel/kyua-atf-compat: Drop-in replacements for atf-run and
130: atf-report that use kyua-cli in the backend.
131:
132: # Running the NetBSD test suite
133:
134: There are two ways to run the NetBSD test suite with Kyua. The easy (or
135: trivial) way is to use the backwards compatibility ATF tools, and the more
136: sophisticated way is to convert the test suite to Kyua and use the native
137: Kyua binary. This section explains both approaches.
138:
139: ## Using the ATF compatibility tools
140:
141: The easiest (but also the least "future-proof") way to run the NetBSD test
142: suite with Kyua is to use the backwards compatibility ATF tools provided by
143: the kyua-atf-compat module. First of all, install the package:
144:
145: $ cd /usr/pkgsrc/deve/kyua-atf-compat
146: $ make install && make clean
147:
148: And then, running the test suite is as easy as:
149:
150: $ cd /usr/tests
151: $ /usr/pkg/bin/atf-run | /usr/pkg/bin/atf-report
152:
153: Please be aware that if the atf-run and atf-report tools provided by
154: kyua-atf-compat appear in your PATH before the real atf-run and atf-report
155: tools shipped by NetBSD, you will experience test failures for all the
156: tests in /usr/tests/atf/atf-run and /usr/tests/atf/atf-report. This is
157: expected: while the compatibility tools behave similarly to the real tools
158: from a user's perspective, they are not fully interchangeable. (For
159: example, the serialization format between atf-run and atf-report is
160: different.)
161:
162: One property of the atf-run wrapper is that it uses the default results
163: database in ~/.kyua/store.db to record the execution of the tests. This
164: means that, once the execution of the tests is done with the compatibility
165: tools, you can still use the native Kyua binary to poke at the results
166: database. More on this below.
167:
168: ## Using the native Kyua command-line interface
169:
170: The preferred way to run the NetBSD test suite with Kyua is to use the
171: native Kyua command-line binary. This is the preferred method because it
172: trains you to use the new interface rather than relying on the old pipeline
173: and because it exposes you to all the new features of Kyua. Regardless,
174: this and the previous approach will yield the same results for a particular
175: execution.
176:
177: Using the native command-line interface is a multi-step process because
178: the existing NetBSD test suite is not prepared for Kyua. Let's take a look
179: at these steps.
180:
181: To get started, install the Kyua packages:
182:
183: $ cd /usr/pkgsrc/deve/kyua-cli
184: $ make install && make clean
185: $ cd /usr/pkgsrc/deve/kyua-atf-compat
186: $ make install && make clean
187:
188: Once this is done, configure Kyua in the same way ATF is configured "out of
189: the box" in NetBSD. Create the /usr/pkg/etc/kyua/kyua.conf file with these
190: contents:
191:
192: syntax('kyuafile', 1)
193: unprivileged_user = '_tests'
194:
195: The next step is to populate /usr/tests with Kyuafiles, as Kyua is unable
196: to read existing Atffiles. This is easy to do with the atf2kyua(1) tool
197: shipped in the kyua-atf-compat package:
198:
199: # atf2kyua /usr/tests
200:
201: And that is it. You can now execute the test suite using Kyua with any of
202: the following two forms:
203:
204: $ cd /usr/tests && kyua test
205: $ kyua test -k /usr/tests/Kyuafile
206:
207: Note that none of these will generate "pretty" reports. These commands
208: will only record the results of the execution into the database. In order
209: to generate reports, keep reading.
210:
211: # Generating reports
212:
213: Once you have ran the NetBSD test suite with any of the mechanisms above,
214: the results of the execution have been stored in the "Kyua store", which is
215: a database located in ~/.kyua/store.db by default. (This path can be
216: changed at any time with the --store flag.)
217:
218: To extract a report from the database using the results of the latest tests
219: run, you can run any of the following:
220:
221: $ kyua report -o my-report.txt
222: $ kyua html-report -o /var/www/results/
223:
224: # Support and feedback
225:
226: The Kyua manual is available in the GNU Info format and can be accessed by
227: running:
228:
229: $ info kyua
230:
231: Alternatively, use the help subcommand to get built-in documentation. The
232: following invocation will print all the available subcommands:
233:
234: $ kyua help
235:
236: And an invocation like this will show you all the possible options for a
237: given subcommand:
238:
239: $ kyua help report-html
240:
241: If you have gone through the instructions above and started playing with
242: Kyua, please do not hesitate to report your experiences (either good or
243: bad) to [Julio Merino](mailto:jmmv@NetBSD.org)! Any comments will be
244: highly appreciated and will be taken into account for the near future of
245: Kyua.
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