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From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
To: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Brendan Higgins <brendanhiggins@google.com>,
	Iurii Zaikin <yzaikin@google.com>,
	"open list:KERNEL SELFTEST FRAMEWORK" 
	<linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, adilger.kernel@dilger.ca,
	KUnit Development <kunit-dev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH linux-kselftest/test v2] ext4: add kunit test for decoding extended timestamps
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 08:08:33 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20191017120833.GA25548@mit.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1e6611e6-2fa6-6f7d-bc7f-0bc2243d9342@linuxfoundation.org>

On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 05:26:29PM -0600, Shuah Khan wrote:
> 
> I don't really buy the argument that unit tests should be deterministic
> Possibly, but I would opt for having the ability to feed test data.

I strongly believe that unit tests should be deterministic.
Non-deterministic tests are essentially fuzz tests.  And fuzz tests
should be different from unit tests.

We want unit tests to run quickly.  Fuzz tests need to be run for a
large number of passes (perhaps hours) in order to be sure that we've
hit any possible bad cases.  We want to be able to easily bisect fuzz
tests --- preferably, automatically.  And any kind of flakey test is
hell to bisect.

It's bad enough when a test is flakey because of the underlying code.
But when a test is flakey because the test inputs are
non-deterministic, it's even worse.

						- Ted

  parent reply	other threads:[~2019-10-17 12:08 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 34+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-10-10  2:39 [PATCH linux-kselftest/test v2] ext4: add kunit test for decoding extended timestamps Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-10  3:46 ` Tim.Bird
2019-10-10 16:45   ` Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-10 20:29     ` Tim.Bird
2019-10-10 23:49       ` Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-10 17:11 ` Shuah Khan
2019-10-10 22:13   ` Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-11 10:05     ` Brendan Higgins
2019-10-11 13:19       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-10-12  2:38         ` Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-16 22:18         ` Brendan Higgins
2019-10-16 23:26           ` Shuah Khan
2019-10-17  0:07             ` Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-17 12:08             ` Theodore Y. Ts'o [this message]
2019-10-17 22:25               ` Tim.Bird
2019-10-17 22:56                 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-10-17 23:40                   ` Tim.Bird
2019-10-18  1:40                     ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-10-18  2:40                       ` Tim.Bird
2019-10-18 15:27                         ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-10-18 20:24                           ` Shuah Khan
2019-10-24  1:30                             ` Brendan Higgins
2019-10-18  1:12                 ` Brendan Higgins
2019-10-18  1:30                   ` Tim.Bird
2019-10-17 22:49               ` Shuah Khan
2019-10-17 23:07                 ` Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-17 23:12                   ` Shuah Khan
2019-10-17 23:27                     ` Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-17 23:42                       ` Shuah Khan
2019-10-17 23:54                       ` Tim.Bird
2019-10-17 23:59                         ` Shuah Khan
2019-10-18  0:11                         ` Iurii Zaikin
2019-10-18  0:38                           ` Tim.Bird
2019-10-18  1:06                             ` Iurii Zaikin

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