Re: Best way to have a FreeBSD VM for automated testing?

On 24/2/24 05:47, Jo Durchholz wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm in repeatable build land, working in Linux and developing a FreeBSD
> appliance.
> 
> For tests, I need to run a FreeBSD VM, put some Python code and test
> data into it, run the script, and get the test results back.
> 
> Repeatability means: Everything done with the VM needs to be scriptable
> (using a GUI for exploring is okay but things have to translate).
> Which in turn means that every setup step for a FreeBSD image comes with
> a pretty high coding and maintenance cost.
> 
> So my question is:
> What's the FreeBSD image that has the least number of steps to get the
> base system up and running? I suppose it's the VM-IMAGES section, but is
> this correct?
> 
> Follow-up question:
> The startup time needs to be as fast as possible. Sub-second would be
> great ("don't disrupt the developer's thought stream").
> I see the boot process from a vanilla VM-IMAGES image takes multiple
> seconds; can this be sped up to just a few seconds, or do I need to run
> the setup and create a VM snapshot at which the VM starts for each test
> run?

Firecracker - firecracker-microvm.github.io

It may add another level of setup but it provides sub-second boot times
- and can run FreeBSD

https://www.daemonology.net/blog/2022-10-18-FreeBSD-Firecracker.html

Not sure if there are any pre-built images with the firecracker kernel,
so may not meet your requirements.


-- 
FreeBSD - the place to B...Software Developing

Shane Ambler