On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 15:48 +0200, Alexander Todorov wrote: > I have been working on another approach to access anaconda from dogtail. > The idea is to run anaconda but display the GUI on another machine. > e.g. export DISPLAY=remote.host:1.0 > The remote host is the host responsible for running the dogtail test. > This is simple, not intrusive to anaconda source code and I would say > independent of the installation environment. There is nothing special > but just run a X application and show it on remote display as we do > frequently. The problem is that this makes the infrastructure need quite a bit higher. Including dogtail in stage2 isn't that complicated and then providing a means to kick off a dogtail script (dogtail=... much like ks=) shouldn't be that intrusive. > Before I spam you with details on let me ask a few questions. > > Q1) How bad is the need for having automated test environment for > Anaconda? For me this is an application with a couple of buttons and I > can't really imagine that something can break so badly. It's definitely not absolutely critical, otherwise it would have been done already :) At the same time, it provides some nice functionality and also allows for some things beyond just testing the buttons as well. eg, you can more easily get screenshots of all the dialogs across all of the languages that are supported. > Q2) How does the community / developers feel like this idea? Do you guys > like it? Will it benefit you somehow? Is it worth implementing it and > setting up a test environment? Isn't it too much overhead just to be > able to test one single application? That's why I'd rather have it implemented entirely within anaconda; keeping the overhead low is important > Q3) How does other vendors using Anaconda feel about that? > I saw on the web that several Linux distros besides Red Hat and Fedora > use Anaconda. I will suppose that these vendors have made custom > modifications/improvements and will want to test them? Do you really > want to? On the other hand how many custom modifications exist? > Do other vendors use the same version that RH/Fedora uses? If done properly, it doesn't provide a hit if someone _doesn't_ want to take advantage of it. Although I expect many people will. > Q4) How do the developers really test bug fixes and new features? > I've heard some use xen or another physical machine with VNC installs, > others use a chroot environment and run anaconda from inside. > Is your setup hard to use/maintain? Does a simpler setup benefit you? > Do you think it is going to work for you? More machines (whether they're physical or virtual machines) is almost always the best way to test things out. And then taking advantage of the various update methods[1] makes it so that you don't have to constantly make new trees. Jeremy [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Updates
