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From: Vitaly Chikunov <vt@altlinux.org>
To: Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org>, linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org
Cc: "Dmitry V. Levin" <ldv@altlinux.org>
Subject: Kernel selftests and backward compatibility?
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:26:08 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210623142608.xx6qc3mkzc72z2cr@altlinux.org> (raw)

Shuah,

Do kselftests require to be backward-compatible?

I see Documentation/dev-tools/kselftest.rst does not require this, but
maybe it's assumed like in other test suites (or in perf).

| In general, the rules for selftests are
| 
|  * Do as much as you can if you're not root;
| 
|  * Don't take too long;
| 
|  * Don't break the build on any architecture, and
| 
|  * Don't cause the top-level "make run_tests" to fail if your feature is
|    unconfigured.

For example LTP says:

| LTP test should be as backward compatible as possible. [...]
| 
| Therefore LTP test for more current features should be able to cope with older
| systems.

Also, (it's said[1]) perf, even though in kernel tree, is supposed to work
properly on any (older/newer) version of Linux.

Can you clarify this point in kselftest.rst?

I think, this would be useful for future kselftests developers, users,
and packagers. (Currently, I package for ALT Linux kselftests (and perf)
from the latest mainline branch, so people could test even older kernels
with the latest kselftests.

If there is policy to be backward-compatible kselftests in the future
could reach a state where users would run them in all pass mode (without
selecting only working tests). This, in turn, would increase [ease of]
usability of tests and thus frequency of their run and consequentially
quality kernel testing overall.

Thanks,

 [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/7/29/677


             reply	other threads:[~2021-06-23 14:26 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-06-23 14:26 Vitaly Chikunov [this message]
2021-06-23 18:08 ` Kernel selftests and backward compatibility? Shuah Khan
2021-06-24 13:48   ` Vitaly Chikunov

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