Re: Make check with different client and server versions

+1. I'd like to support us doing this.

Nathan Hartman wrote:
> How would we do this?

As a starting point, for each client version to be tested, the new
multi-combination test driver should:

   * Run the regression test suite that is supplied with that client
version. (This will be easiest because most variation is associated
with client side changes.)

   * Tell the test suite ("make check") which server version to expect.

This is partly done: the Python and C tests take an argument

   --server-minor-version
     Set the minor version for the server ('3'..'14')

   or, for the C tests, docs apparently not updated recently:
     set the minor version for the server ('3', '4', '5', or '6')

I'm not sure exactly how one sets up the server appropriately, before
running with that option, for various kinds of server. Maybe 'make
check' and/or 'make svnserveautocheck' and/or 'make davautocheck' have
ways to specify how to find and run the desired server version. We'll
probably need to check and update that.

Ideally, later, the tests should also be divided or tagged so we can
select sets of tests:
   - client-server tests
   - client-only tests
   - server-only tests
because we could then eliminate running redundant sets. Initially, that
isn't critical.

> (1) Which versions are we interested in cross-testing in this manner?

Start with a simple fixed set, such as

   - (client: trunk, server: 1.10)
   - (client: 1.10, server: trunk)

Review later, once that's working.

(I suggested 1.10 there because it's the most recent LTS version, but
the important thing is just to start with something.)

> (2) How do we handle differences between versions?
[...]
> Is the test driver program supposed to contain knowledge of these
> differences and prevent some of the tests from running under certain
> combinations of client and server versions?

Annotate the tests according to what server versions they require.

This is at least partly done. The test suite already uses conditionals like

   if svntest.main.options.server_minor_version < 9:

I'm not sure if this is already done everywhere it needs to be. I would
expect to see some of the Python "decorators" such as

   @SkipUnless(server_authz_has_aliases)

using "server_minor_version" but I don't see any.

> (3) How do we handle dependencies?

Initially: whatever works. Probably neatest to install the dependencies
for each built version of Subversion into a location dedicated to that
version of Subversion, so they don't affect each other and don't affect
the rest of the system.

- Julian
Received on 2019-10-14 17:33:56 CEST