Megatest

5/5/2011

Matt Welland

Abstract

Megatest is a minimalistic tool to help automate and manage the running of a suite of regression tests or other processes and to roll up the results for display on a web page or dashboard.

Table of Contents

Section 0.1: About Megatest

Subsection 0.1.1: Megatest design philosophy

Subsection 0.1.2: Megatest architecture

Section 0.2: Installation

Subsection 0.2.1: Compilation

Subsubsection 0.2.1.1: Dependencies

Subsubsection 0.2.1.2: Build and install

Subsection 0.2.2: Setup

Subsubsection 0.2.2.1: Create megatest.config

Subsubsection 0.2.2.2: Create runconfigs.config

Subsubsection 0.2.2.3: Create the tests directory and your first test

Subsubsection 0.2.2.4: Create the testconfig file for your test

Subsubsection 0.2.2.5: Create your test running script, main.sh

Subsubsection 0.2.2.6: Run megatest and watch your run progress

Section 0.3: Reference

Subsection 0.3.1: Environment variables

Subsection 0.3.2: megatest.config settings

Subsubsection 0.3.2.1: [setup]

0.1 About Megatest

0.1.1 Megatest design philosophy

Megatest is intended to provide the minimum needed resources to make writing a suite of tests for software, design engineering or process control (via owlfs for example) without being specialized for any specific problem space. Megatest in of itself does not know what constitutes a PASS or FAIL of a test. In most cases megatest is best used in conjunction with logpro or a similar tool to parse, analyze and decide on the test outcome. A call to megatest can then be made to record the result.

0.1.2 Megatest architecture

All data to specify the tests and configure the system is stored in plain text files. All system state is stored in an sqlite3 database. Tests are launched using the launching system available for the distributed compute platform in use. A template script is provided which can launch jobs on local and remote Linux hosts. Currently megatest uses the network filesystem to “call home” to your master sqlite3 database.

0.2 Installation

0.2.1 Compilation

0.2.1.1 Dependencies

Chicken scheme and a number of eggs are required for building megatest. See the file utils/installall.sh for an automated way to install the dependencies on Linux.

0.2.1.2 Build and install

Run “make test” to create the megatest executable. You may wish to copy the executable to a centrally accessible location.

0.2.2 Setup

0.2.2.1 Create megatest.config

Create the file megatest.config using the megatest.config template from the tests directory. At a minimum you need the following:

# Fields are the keys under which your test runs are organized

[fields]

field1 TEXT

field2 TEXT

[jobtools]

# The launcher launches jobs to the local or remote hosts,

# the job is managed on the target host by megatest,

# comment out launcher to run local only. An example launcher

# "nbfake" can be found in the utils directory.

launcher nbfake

# The disks section specifies where the tests will be run. As you

# run out of space in a partition you can add additional disks

# entries.

# Format is:

# name /path/to/area

[disks]

1 /tmp

0.2.2.2 Create runconfigs.config

This file is used to set environment variables that are run specific. You can simply create an empty file to start.

0.2.2.3 Create the tests directory and your first test

The structure should look like this:

../tests

├── megatest.config

├── runconfigs.config

└── tests

└── mytest

├── main.sh

└── testconfig

0.2.2.4 Create the testconfig file for your test

[setup]

runscript main.sh

0.2.2.5 Create your test running script, main.sh

#!/bin/bash

megatest -runstep mystep1 "sleep 20;echo Done" -m "mystep1 is done"

megatest -test-status :state COMPLETED :status PASS -m "This is a test level comment"

0.2.2.6 Run megatest and watch your run progress

megatest :field1 abc :field2 def :runname 2011week08.4a -runall

watch megatest -list-runs %

0.3 Reference

0.3.1 Environment variables

Variable	Purpose	Default value/Comment
MT_CMDINFO	Conveys test variables to the megatest test runner.	Not for use by the end user
MT_TEST_RUN_DIR	Directory assigned by megatest for the test to run.	Tests can consider this their “home” directory
MT_TEST_NAME	Name of the test, corrosponds to the directory name under tests.
MT_ITEM_INFO	Iterated tests will set this to a sequence of key/values ((KEY val) ...)
MT_RUN_AREA_HOME	Directory where megatest was launched from and where the tests code can be found
MT_RUNNAME	Name of this run as set by the :runname parameter
<field1> ....	The field values as set on the megatest -runall command line (e.g. :field1 abc)	Planning ahead your field names is important so as to avoid collisions with other environment variables

0.3.2 megatest.config settings

0.3.2.1 [setup]

section	variable	value	comment
[setup]	max_concurrent_jobs	if variable is not defined no limit on jobs
	executable	full path to megatest binary	Use only if necessary, megatest will extract the location from where it used to launch and add append that to the PATH for test runs.
[fields]	string of letters, numbers and underscore	string of letters, numbers and underscore
[jobtools]	launcher	command line used to launch jobs - the job command (megatest -execute) will be appended to this
	workhosts	list of hostnames to run jobs on NOT SUPPORTED RIGHT NOW
[env-override]	string of letters, numbers and underscore	any string	These are set on the test launching machine, not the test running machine. Typical usage is to control the host or run queue for launching tests. These values will not be seen by the test when it runs.
[disks]	string of letters, numbers and underscore	a valid path writable by the test launching process and by the test process	The disk usage balancing algorithm is to choose the disk with the least space for each test run.