Preface

This book is organised as three sub-books; getting started, writing tests and reference.

Why Megatest?

The Megatest project was started for two reasons, the first was an immediate and pressing need for a generalized tool to manage a suite of regression tests and the second was the fact that the author had written or maintained several such tools at different companies over the years and it seemed a good thing to have a single open source tool, flexible enough to meet the needs of any team doing continuous integrating and or running a complex suite of tests for release qualification.

Megatest Design Philosophy

Megatest is intended to provide the minimum needed resources to make writing a suite of tests and tasks for implementing continuous build 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.

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.

Road Map

Note 1: This road-map is tentative and subject to change without notice.

Note 2: Starting over. Old plan is commented out.

Current Items

ww05 - migrate to inmem-db

Keep as much the same as possible. Add internal reference to almost eliminate contention on db(s).

Add internal reference db
Verify that actions are accessing correct db
1. -runtests - inmem
2. -list-runs - local (but not megatest.db)
3. dashboard - local (but not megatest.db)
Mirror db to /var/tmp…
Dashboard read db from per-run db.
Dashboard read db from /var/tmp
Runs register in tasks table in monitor.db
Server polls tasks table for next action (in addition?)
Change run loop to execute in server, triggered by call to polling of tasks table

Getting Started

Getting started with Megatest

How to install Megatest and set it up for running your regressions and continuous integration process.

Installation

Dependencies

Chicken scheme and a number of "eggs" are required for building Megatest. See the script installall.sch in the utils directory of the distribution for a mostly automated way to install everything needed for building Megatest on Linux.

[An example footnote.]

And now for something completely different: monkeys, lions and tigers (Bengal and Siberian) using the alternative syntax index entries. Note that multi-entry terms generate separate index entries.

Here are a couple of image examples: an images/smallnew.png example inline image followed by an example block image:

Figure 1. Tiger block image

Followed by an example table:

Table 1. An example table
Option	Description
-a USER GROUP	Add USER to GROUP.
-R GROUP	Disables access to GROUP.

Example 1. An example example

Lorum ipum…

Sub-section with Anchor

Sub-section at level 2.

Chapter Sub-section

Sub-section at level 3.

Chapter Sub-section

Sub-section at level 4.

This is the maximum sub-section depth supported by the distributed AsciiDoc configuration.
[A second example footnote.]

The Second Chapter

An example link to anchor at start of the first sub-section.

An example link to a bibliography entry [taoup].

Writing Tests

The First Chapter of the Second Part

Chapters grouped into book parts are at level 1 and can contain sub-sections.

How To Do Things

Tricks

This section is a compendium of a various useful tricks for debugging, configuring and generally getting the most out of Megatest.

Limiting your running jobs

The following example will limit a test in the jobgroup "group1" to no more than 10 tests simultaneously.

In your testconfig:

[test_meta]
jobgroup group1

In your megatest.config:

[jobgroups]
group1 10
custdes 4

Debugging Tricks

Examining The Environment

During Config File Processing

Organising Your Tests and Tasks

[tests-paths]
1 #{get misc parent}/simplerun/tests

[setup]

The runscript method is a brute force way to run scripts where the user is responsible for setting STATE and STATUS

runscript main.csh

Debugging Server Problems

sudo lsof -i
sudo netstat -lptu
sudo netstat -tulpn

Reference

Config File Settings

Trim trailing spaces

[configf:settings trim-trailing-spaces yes]

The testconfig File

Setup section

Header

[setup]

The runscript method is a brute force way to run scripts where the user is responsible for setting STATE and STATUS

runscript main.csh

Requirements section

Header

[requirements]

Wait on Other Tests

# A normal waiton waits for the prior tests to be COMPLETED
# and PASS, CHECK or WAIVED
waiton test1 test2

Mode

The default (i.e. if mode is not specified) is normal. All pre-dependent tests must be COMPLETED and PASS, CHECK or WAIVED before the test will start

mode   normal

The toplevel mode requires only that the prior tests are COMPLETED.

mode toplevel

A item based waiton will start items in a test when the same-named item is COMPLETED and PASS, CHECK or WAIVED in the prior test

mode itemmatch

# With a toplevel test you may wish to generate your list
# of tests to run dynamically
#
# waiton #{shell get-valid-tests-to-run.sh}

Run time limit

runtimelim 1h 2m 3s  # this will automatically kill the test if it runs for more than 1h 2m and 3s

Skip

Header

[skip]

Skip on Still-running Tests

# NB// If the prevrunning line exists with *any* value the test will
# automatically SKIP if the same-named test is currently RUNNING

prevrunning x

Skip if a File Exists

fileexists /path/to/a/file # skip if /path/to/a/file exists

Controlled waiver propagation

If test is FAIL and previous test in run with same MT_TARGET is WAIVED then apply the following rules from the testconfig: If a waiver check is specified in the testconfig apply the check and if it passes then set this FAIL to WAIVED

Waiver check has two parts, 1) a list of waiver, rulename, filepatterns and 2) the rulename script spec (note that "diff" and "logpro" are predefined)

###### EXAMPLE FROM testconfig #########
# matching file(s) will be diff'd with previous run and logpro applied
# if PASS or WARN result from logpro then WAIVER state is set
#
[waivers]
# logpro_file    rulename      input_glob
waiver_1         logpro        lookittmp.log

[waiver_rules]

# This builtin rule is the default if there is no <waivername>.logpro file
# diff   diff %file1% %file2%

# This builtin rule is applied if a <waivername>.logpro file exists
# logpro diff %file1% %file2% | logpro %waivername%.logpro %waivername%.html

Ezsteps

To transfer the environment to the next step you can do the following:

$MT_MEGATEST -env2file .ezsteps/${stepname}

Triggers

In your testconfig triggers can be specified

[triggers]

# Call script running.sh when test goes to state=RUNNING, status=PASS
RUNNING/PASS running.sh

# Call script running.sh any time state goes to RUNNING
RUNNING/ running.sh

# Call script onpass.sh any time status goes to PASS
PASS/ onpass.sh

Scripts called will have; test-id test-rundir trigger, added to the commandline.

HINT

To start an xterm (useful for debugging), use a command line like the following:

[triggers]
COMPLETED/ xterm -e bash -s --

Note	There is a trailing space after the --

Programming API

These routines can be called from the megatest repl.

Table 2. API Server Management Calls
API Call	Purpose comments	Returns	Comments
(rmt:login run-id)	`Verify the the version, testsuite area etc. are correct.`	`#( #t "successful login" )`
(rmt:start-server run-id)		`#( success/fail n/a )`
(rmt:kill-server run-id)		`#( success/fail n/a )`	`Works only if the server is still reachable`

Table 3. API Keys Related Calls
API Call	Purpose comments	Returns	Comments
(rmt:get-key-val-pairs run-id)		`#t=success/#f=fail`	`Works only if the server is still reachable`
(rmt:get-keys run-id)		`( key1 key2 … )`

Megatest Internals

Appendix A: Example Appendix

One or more optional appendixes go here at section level zero.

Appendix Sub-section

Note	Preface and appendix subsections start out of sequence at level 2 (level 1 is skipped). This only applies to multi-part book documents.

Example Bibliography

The bibliography list is a style of AsciiDoc bulleted list.

[taoup] Eric Steven Raymond. The Art of Unix Programming. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-13-142901-9.
[walsh-muellner] Norman Walsh & Leonard Muellner. DocBook - The Definitive Guide. O’Reilly & Associates. 1999. ISBN 1-56592-580-7.

Example Glossary

Glossaries are optional. Glossaries entries are an example of a style of AsciiDoc labeled lists.

A glossary term: The corresponding (indented) definition.
A second glossary term: The corresponding (indented) definition.

Example Colophon

Text at the end of a book describing facts about its production.

The Megatest Users Manual

Preface

Why Megatest?

Megatest Design Philosophy

Megatest Architecture

Road Map

Current Items

ww05 - migrate to inmem-db

Getting Started

Installation

Dependencies

Sub-section with Anchor

Chapter Sub-section

Chapter Sub-section

The Second Chapter

Writing Tests

The First Chapter of the Second Part

How To Do Things

Tricks

Limiting your running jobs

Debugging Tricks

Examining The Environment

During Config File Processing

Organising Your Tests and Tasks

Debugging Server Problems

Reference

Config File Settings

Trim trailing spaces

The testconfig File

Setup section

Header

Requirements section

Header

Wait on Other Tests

Mode

Run time limit

Skip

Header

Skip on Still-running Tests

Skip if a File Exists

Controlled waiver propagation

Ezsteps

Triggers

Programming API

Megatest Internals

Appendix A: Example Appendix

Appendix Sub-section

Example Bibliography

Example Glossary

Example Colophon

Example Index