Developers' Handbook: Chapter on testing

[Lawrence Greening]

Hi.
​
A variation of the following was posted to freebsd-testing. I would generally avoid cross-posting but I'm reposting here because of recent interest in testing on this list...

I am writing a chapter on testing for the FreeBSD Developers' Handbook.

The following topics are expected to be covered:

* FreeBSD Test Suite
* Kyua
* Automated Testing Framework (ATF)
* Organization of current FreeBSD tests.
* Using automation and virtualization to reduce the overhead in setting up the test infrastructure.
* Examples of different types of testing.
* Reproducibility in building and testing.

This list of topics is just a starting point. The scope and organization will evolve as the chapter is written.

After reading the chapter, the reader should be able to do at least the following:

* Install and configure the necessary testing tools, test suites, etc. for the purposes of testing FreeBSD.
* Run tests.
* Write tests.
* Submit tests.

The chapter will include walkthroughs and guided or cumulative examples.

At this preliminary stage, I am interested in the following feedback:

(1) What material do you want to see covered?
(2) What material do you want to see prioritized?
(3) What general approach(es) do you want to see taken towards the subject matter?
(4) Are there good example tests or areas of the code base that deserve focus, either because of their importance, usefulness as examples, history of regressions, etc.?
(5) Anything else?

Cheers,
Lawrence