Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 2/3] qtest: enable qtest for most targets

[Peter Maydell]

On 17 April 2012 21:24, Blue Swirl <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 07:33, Peter Maydell <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Just testing a device shouldn't require running a particular
>> board model either, of course.
>
> The goal is obviously to make comprehensive tests for all devices in
> all boards. Also, if a device is only used by a certain board then
> yes, that particular board model is required.

Device testing should be done by instantiating the device in
a test harness and prodding it according to whatever tests
you're doing. Trying to use the board as an ad-hoc test
harness means you can't test aspects of the device which
the board doesn't use, and if the board changes then half your
test cases probably break.

>>> I think we should probably refactor the boards to do something more useful
>>> if a kernel isn't specified verses just buggering out.
>>
>> I don't inherently object if you can define something that's genuinely
>> more useful. I'm not sure "start the CPU and have it execute through
>> zeroed out RAM so the user gets no indication they've forgotten something"
>> really counts, though...
>
> The error could be downgraded to a warning.

Well, it could. But we should make that decision based on whether it
makes sense and has a use case for actual users of the board, not
because we're trying to get away with not having a setup that lets
us properly unit test devices.

-- PMM