On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 20:31, Peter Maydell <peter.mayd...@linaro.org> wrote: > On 17 April 2012 21:24, Blue Swirl <blauwir...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 07:33, Peter Maydell <peter.mayd...@linaro.org> >> wrote: >>> Just testing a device shouldn't require running a particular >>> board model either, of course. >> >> The goal is obviously to make comprehensive tests for all devices in >> all boards. Also, if a device is only used by a certain board then >> yes, that particular board model is required. > > Device testing should be done by instantiating the device in > a test harness and prodding it according to whatever tests > you're doing. Trying to use the board as an ad-hoc test > harness means you can't test aspects of the device which > the board doesn't use, and if the board changes then half your > test cases probably break.
You have a point. The unused features may be uninteresting though if no board uses them. > >>>> I think we should probably refactor the boards to do something more useful >>>> if a kernel isn't specified verses just buggering out. >>> >>> I don't inherently object if you can define something that's genuinely >>> more useful. I'm not sure "start the CPU and have it execute through >>> zeroed out RAM so the user gets no indication they've forgotten something" >>> really counts, though... >> >> The error could be downgraded to a warning. > > Well, it could. But we should make that decision based on whether it > makes sense and has a use case for actual users of the board, not > because we're trying to get away with not having a setup that lets > us properly unit test devices. I disagree. I see many benefits in qtest and very little downsides in changes like these. qtest is a tool to let developers test the changes they make to devices, so breakages shouldn't be so common. This should improve the development process in QEMU tremendously. It's also a tool to find bugs and improve code quality. I value the above much higher than how user experience is slightly (and also arguably) downgraded, because now they are able to shoot themselves to a foot more easily. > > -- PMM
