Re: [PATCH] selftests/vm: enable running select groups of tests

[Andrew Morton]

On Wed, 6 Jul 2022 14:38:03 -0400 Nico Pache <npache@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 5, 2022 at 4:35 PM Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue,  5 Jul 2022 14:56:05 -0400 Joel Savitz <jsavitz@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > Add the ability to run one or more groups of vm tests (specified
> > > by the environment variable TEST_ITEMS). Preserve existing default
> > > behavior of running all tests when TEST_ITEMS is empty or "default".
> >
> Hi Andrew,
> 
> > What is the reason for this?  What's the use case?
> 
> The current design of vm selftests is all-or-none. We'd like to be
> able to selectively run these tests (We settled for selective groups
> of tests rather than individual tests).
> 
> The main reason for doing this is our efforts to expand RedHats MM CI
> testing. There are two use cases for these changes that relate to our
> reasoning:
> 1) Our current CI has overlapping tests between LTP and vm selftests,
> so we'd like a way to prevent running the same test in two places.
> 2) We'd like the ability to skip a test if it is determined to be
> unstable or requires certain hardware requirements.
> 
> By adding this functionality we are really expanding what we are able
> to do with the stock vm-selftests.

OK, please let's get this info into the changelog - it's the most
important part.

> > And why via the environment rather than via commandline args?
> Just a design choice I suppose. I'm sure Joel would be willing to
> implement it as a cmdline arg if you'd prefer that approach.

I think that would be best.