Subject: Re: [PATCH net] selftests: netdevsim: add a config file

From: Jakub Kicinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2024 10:34:30 -0800

On Tue, 16 Jan 2024 18:40:49 +0100 Paolo Abeni wrote:
> On Tue, 2024-01-16 at 07:43 -0800, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > netdevsim tests aren't very well integrated with kselftest,
> > which has its advantages and disadvantages.   
> 
> Out of sheer ignorance I don't see the advantage?!?
> 
> > But regardless
> > of the intended integration - a config file to know what kernel
> > to build is very useful, add one.  
> 
> With a complete integration we could more easily ask kbuild to generate
> automatically the kernel config suitable for testing; what about
> completing such integration?

My bad, I didn't have the right words at my fingertips so I deleted 
the explanation of advantages.

make run_tests doesn't give us the ability to inject logic between
each test, AFAIU. The runner for netdevsim I typed up checks after
each test whether the VM has any crashes or things got otherwise
out of whack. And if so kills the VM and starts a new one to run
the next test. For make run_tests we can still more or less zero
in on which test caused an oops or crash, but the next test will 
try to keep going. Even if we force kill it after we see a crash
I didn't see in the docs how to continue testing from a specific
point.

So all in all, yeah, uniformity is good, the hacky approach kinda
works. Converting netdevsim to make run_tests is not a priority..