Test Standards
This page will be used to collect information about test standards.
Contents
meta-documents
- https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119 - IETF MUST, SHALL, MAY, etc. wording standards
A survey of existing test systems was conducted in the Fall of 2018. The survey and results are here: Test Stack Survey
Here are some things we'd like to standardize in open source automated testing:
Terminology and Framework
- Test nomenclature - See the Test Glossary
- CI loop diagram
Diagram
Below is a diagram for the high level CI loop:
The boxes represent different processes, hardware, or storage locations. Lines between boxes indicate APIs or control flow, and are labeled with letters. The intent of this is to provide a reference model for the test standards.
Power Control
See the document...
Test Definition
The test definition is the set of attributes, code, and data that are used to perform a test. A test definition standard would specify things like the following:
- fields - the data elements of a test
- file format (json, xml, etc.) - how a test is expressed and transported
- meta-data - data describing the test
- visualization control - information used for visualization of results
- instructions - executable code to perform the test
See Test Definition Project for more information about a project to harmonize test definitions across multiple test systems.
Test dependencies
- how to specify test dependencies
- ex: assert_define ENV_VAR_NAME
- ex: kernel_config
- types of dependencies
Test Execution API (E)
- test API
- host/target abstraction
- kernel installation / provisioning
- file operations
- console access
- command execution
- test retrieval, build, deployment
- test execution:
- ex: 'make test'
- runtest.sh?
- test execution:
- test phases
If a program uses Makefile to build and install the software under test, then it should provide the following Makefile targets, to support testing of the software.
"make test"
or
"make check"
See https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Goals (section "9.2 Arguments to Specify the Goals")
See also: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Standard-Targets
Build Artifacts
- test package format
- meta-data for each test
- test results
- baseline expected results for particular tests on particular platforms
Test package format
This is a package intended to be installed on a target (as opposed to the collection of test definition information that may be stored elsewhere in the test system)
Run Artifacts
- logs
- data files (audio, video)
- monitor results (power log, trace log)
- snapshots
Results Format
- test log output format
- counts
- subtest results
- Candidate formats:
One aspect of the result format is the result or status code for individual test cases or the test itself. See Test Result Codes and comparison of TAP, SubUnit and JUnit output formats.
TAP version 14
The effort to create TAP version 14 has stalled.
Version 14 was intended to capture current practices that are already in use.
The pull request for version 14, and resulting discussion is at:
* https://github.com/TestAnything/testanything.github.io/pull/36/files
You can see the full version 14 document in the submitter's repo:
$ git clone https://github.com/isaacs/testanything.github.io.git $ cd testanything.github.io $ git checkout tap14 $ ls tap-version-14-specification.md
Pass Criteria
- what tests can be skipped (this is more part of test execution and control)
- what test results can be ignored (xfail)
- min required pass counts, max allowed failures
- thresholds for measurement results
- requires testcase id, number and operator
Miscelaneous (uncategorized)
- environment variables used to create an SDK build environment for a board
- environment variables used for
- location of kernel configuration (used for dependency testing) KCONFIG_PATH (adopted by LTP)
- default name of test program in a target package (run-test.sh?)
- this should be part of the test definition