On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 4:54 PM Brendan Higgins <brendanhiggins@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > This patch set proposes KUnit, a lightweight unit testing and mocking > framework for the Linux kernel. > > Unlike Autotest and kselftest, KUnit is a true unit testing framework; > it does not require installing the kernel on a test machine or in a VM > and does not require tests to be written in userspace running on a host > kernel. Additionally, KUnit is fast: From invocation to completion KUnit > can run several dozen tests in under a second. Currently, the entire > KUnit test suite for KUnit runs in under a second from the initial > invocation (build time excluded). > > KUnit is heavily inspired by JUnit, Python's unittest.mock, and > Googletest/Googlemock for C++. KUnit provides facilities for defining > unit test cases, grouping related test cases into test suites, providing > common infrastructure for running tests, mocking, spying, and much more. > > ## What's so special about unit testing? > > A unit test is supposed to test a single unit of code in isolation, > hence the name. There should be no dependencies outside the control of > the test; this means no external dependencies, which makes tests orders > of magnitudes faster. Likewise, since there are no external dependencies, > there are no hoops to jump through to run the tests. Additionally, this > makes unit tests deterministic: a failing unit test always indicates a > problem. Finally, because unit tests necessarily have finer granularity, > they are able to test all code paths easily solving the classic problem > of difficulty in exercising error handling code. > > ## Is KUnit trying to replace other testing frameworks for the kernel? > > No. Most existing tests for the Linux kernel are end-to-end tests, which > have their place. A well tested system has lots of unit tests, a > reasonable number of integration tests, and some end-to-end tests. KUnit > is just trying to address the unit test space which is currently not > being addressed. > > ## More information on KUnit > > There is a bunch of documentation near the end of this patch set that > describes how to use KUnit and best practices for writing unit tests. > For convenience I am hosting the compiled docs here: > https://google.github.io/kunit-docs/third_party/kernel/docs/ Nice! I've been using mocking techniques in kernel code for the libnvdimm test infrastructure in tools/testing/nvdimm/. It's part unit test infrastructure, part emulation, and I've always had the feeling it's all a bit too adhoc. I'm going to take a look and see what can be converted to kunit. Please include linux-nvdimm@xxxxxxxxxxxx on future postings. I'll shamelessly plug my lwn article about unit testing https://lwn.net/Articles/654071/ because it's always good to find fellow co-travelers to compare notes and advocate for more test oriented kernel development.
