DailyDesktopTesting
Launchpad Entry: karmic-qa-daily-desktop-testing
Created:
Contributors:
Packages affected:
Summary
Add desktop tests to the daily hardware testing schedule on laptops and netbooks.
Release Note
This section should include a paragraph describing the end-user impact of this change. It is meant to be included in the release notes of the first release in which it is implemented. (Not all of these will actually be included in the release notes, at the release manager's discretion; but writing them is a useful exercise.)
It is mandatory.
Rationale
This should cover the _why_: why is this change being proposed, what justifies it, where we see this justified.
User stories
Assumptions
Design
You can have subsections that better describe specific parts of the issue.
Implementation
This section should describe a plan of action (the "how") to implement the changes discussed. Could include subsections like:
UI Changes
Should cover changes required to the UI, or specific UI that is required to implement this
Code Changes
Code changes should include an overview of what needs to change, and in some cases even the specific details.
Migration
Include:
- data migration, if any
- redirects from old URLs to new ones, if any
- how users will be pointed to the new way of doing things, if necessary.
Test/Demo Plan
It's important that we are able to test new features, and demonstrate them to users. Use this section to describe a short plan that anybody can follow that demonstrates the feature is working. This can then be used during testing, and to show off after release. Please add an entry to http://testcases.qa.ubuntu.com/Coverage/NewFeatures for tracking test coverage.
This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.
Unresolved issues
This should highlight any issues that should be addressed in further specifications, and not problems with the specification itself; since any specification with problems cannot be approved.
BoF agenda and discussion
- Checkbox is running daily across multiple machines
- Is there any reason to *not* use Checkbox to perform daily desktop testing?
- What is necessary to add to the LDTP plugin in Checkbox to make this work?
As desktop testing is mostly software there is no need to run it under real HW -> virtualization
- Might be useful to test software only under one image (rather than with every *buntu image)
- Thus we get the software testing performed once per machine per day
Are there compelling reasons to use virtualization?
- Ability to test live ISO image
- Totally clean environment for each test
- Can snap off copies of installed image rather than doing a wipe and install
- saves time and avoids potential archive changes in the meantime
- provides consistent environment for parallel tests
- Greater protection in the case of potential insecure code
- Kees and James Troup are good resources to discuss security of network
Issues with virtualization
- EC2 can't boot ISOs; need to create an image
- but if we do KVM testing on our hardware this is not an issue
- Difficult to test X (e.g. compositing)
- Some issues are related to real hardware
- E.g. testing X drivers from different vendors
Test definitions need to be aware of whether they are specifically hardware related
- This allows us to schedule tests that need to be run on physical HW to be run there and others on VMs
Proposal
- do a LiveCD install on a physical machine, then do a KVM CD install on this install, then perform desktop tests inside the KVM image
- Some tests can be performed on the (physical) host for the tests that require physical hardware
- We should be able to set aside some duplicate hardware to use as a host (and never tear it down to do physical HW testing)
How can we test the LiveCD environment automatically?
- What we want to do:
- Boot KVM image from LiveCD
- Run tests (checkbox?)
- Install from LiveCD
- Run (more) tests
Dependency Issues
- Testing from packages has a potential issue if the test package(s) depend on other packages
- You might pull in a dependency for the test package(s) that aren't geting pulled in but should be for tested programs
- Tests should not change the package state
- wget a tarball or something instead
Action Items
- determine 1-2 duplicate machines that can be removed from the PPA pool and used as permanent VM hosts (Ronald)
- coordinate with Eitan
- talk to installer team and find out best way to get LiveCD tests to execute (Marc)