[lsb-discuss] LSB conf call notes for 2009-06-17

Jeff Licquia jeff at licquia.org
Wed Jun 17 18:38:43 PDT 2009


Attendees: Jeff Licquia, Mats Wichmann, Stew Benedict, Jiri Dluhos,
Brian Proffitt, Ted Tso.

Jeff: appbat.  Jiri: would like as much automated as possible, even if
some tests have to be dropped.  Ted: the more we can automate, the
easier it will be to find problems early.  Two questions: automate as
much as possible, and whether to remove the remaining manual tests.
Jiri: most annoying are the more graphical or are difficult to run
across a network.  qt-designer and celestia are two.  Mats: celestia is
a real pain without a real local terminal.  OTOH, OpenGL is probably the
least tested part of the LSB right now.  We're open to any better
suggestion for any app, but we also need to test these things.  Jiri:
different app that's easier to automate?  Ted: also, if you don't have a
display, how can you confirm correct behavior?

Jeff: VNC-style solution?  Stew: nothing against that, but could run
into performance issues with something like celestia.  Ted: may need to
pick other programs that are less stressful.  Stew: don't disagree that
it's tedious.  Jeff: not sure about VNC's support for OpenGL; maybe NX
or something else like that.

Jeff: other idea: LDN article or "appbat-helper" package that makes this
stuff easier.  Jiri: my script does the downloading and makes running
the tests run a lot more smoothly.  Jeff: tried it?  Stew: haven't, but
the concept sounds great.  Could also create an "appbat" task package.
Jeff: so "yum install" or "aptitude install"?  Stew: yes, except that
part fo the FVT is to install the RPMs.

Jeff: different apps, or apps to drop?  Mats: nothing special about the
ones we picked; xpaint and xpdf in particular may not be appropriate.
Problem is to pick replacements.  Main criterion is that it touches the
API we're interested in.  Second is that we can build it; this is an
issue of using APIs that aren't in the LSB.  We use libbat to cover some
of those situations, but that's not ideal.  It's also not useful to have
an app that does tons of different things.  Always hard to pick good
ones.  Ted: and custom apps tend not to be real world and difficult.
Mats: we'd prefer to rely on the runtime tests.  Jeff: automated appbat
tests are like runtime tests.  Mats: the problem is that testing
graphical apps

Jeff: use a11y to automate?  Ted: can OpenGL be so automated?  Jeff: two
things: may be better than nothing, and OpenGL may need to have a11y too.

Jiri: use a virtual framebuffer?  Stew: might not make it any easier;
you still have to do keyboard and mouse integration.  Jeff: keyboard
might be doable, but mouse clicks will be impossible.  Stew: also,
timing for slow vs. fast systems; when do you take the screenshot?
Jiri: could do.  Jeff: yes, but is it the best way?  Stew: typically,
the appbat is the last thing, so you don't do it very often.  Is it
better use of time to automate, or to just do these things manually?
Jeff: good question, but can apply to each individual task.  Ted: bottom
line, we'll accept patches, but may not be able to actively work on it.

Jeff: SDK.  Mats found a major bug in the gcc 4.3 support over the
weekend.  Fix applied Tuesday; will see about an RC2 this week.


More information about the lsb-discuss mailing list