Megatest

//  Copyright 2021, Matthew Welland.
// 
// This file is part of Megatest.
// 
//     Megatest is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
//     it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
//     the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
//     (at your option) any later version.
// 
//     Megatest is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
//     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
//     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
//     GNU General Public License for more details.
// 
//     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
//     along with Megatest.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Debugging
---------

A word on Bisecting
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bisecting is a debug strategy intended to speed up finding the root
cause.

["graphviz", "bisecting.png"]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
include::bisecting.dot[]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

It is common to start debugging where the problem was observed and
then work back. However by inspecting the output at stage "C" in the
example above you would potentially save a lot of debug effort.

Examining The Environment
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Test Control Panel - xterm
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

From the dashboard click on a test PASS/FAIL button. This brings up a
test control panel. Aproximately near the center left of the window
there is a button "Start Xterm". Push this to get an xterm with the
full context and environment loaded for that test. You can run scripts
or ezsteps by copying from the testconfig (hint, load up the
testconfig in a separate text editor window). This is the easiest
way to debug your tests.

During Config File Processing
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It is often helpful to know the content of variables in various
contexts as Megatest does the actions needed to run your tests. A handy technique is to force the startup of an xterm in the context being examined.

For example, if an item list is not being generated as expected you
can inject the startup of an xterm as if it were an item:

.Original items table
-----------------
[items]
CELLNAME [system getcellname.sh]
-----------------

.Items table modified for debug
-----------------
[items]
DEBUG [system xterm]
CELLNAME [system getcellnames.sh]
-----------------

When this test is run an xterm will pop up. In that xterm the
environment is exactly that in which the script "getcellnames.sh"
would run. You can now debug the script to find out why it isn't
working as expected.