Re: [Qemu-devel] [ANNOUNCE] qemu-test: a set of tests scripts for QEMU

[Peter Maydell]

On 29 December 2011 16:36, Avi Kivity <address@hidden> wrote:
> Yes; but using Linux limits you to what it exposes (of course Linux
> exposes quite a lot, so that's mostly a non issue; but we'll have
> counterexamples).

Actually IME Linux is pretty conservative about how it uses devices.
A lot of the ARM device models have gaping holes in their emulation
which we've never needed to fix because Linux simply doesn't use
those features (eg the PL080 DMA controller which doesn't actually
implement DMA!)

I think for devices what would be particularly useful would be
if you can write a (simple) test for something at the register
level, which generates an image which you can run on the real
hardware as well as on QEMU. Then you can confirm that your test
case is correct. Otherwise the tests are just going to bake in the
same assumptions/misconceptions about what the hardware does as
the QEMU model.

My guess is that a serious attempt at tests covering all the
functionality of a device is probably approximately doubling
the effort required for a device model, incidentally. A
half-hearted attempt probably doesn't buy you much over
automating "boot the guest OS and prod its driver".

-- PMM