xref: /third_party/ltp/doc/Test-Writing-Guidelines.asciidoc

LTP Test Writing Guidelines
===========================

This document describes LTP guidelines and is intended for anybody who want to
write or modify a LTP testcase. It's not a definitive guide and it's not, by
any means, a substitute for common sense.

NOTE: See also
      https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/C-Test-API[C Test API],
      https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/Shell-Test-API[Shell Test API],
      https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/LTP-Library-API-Writing-Guidelines[LTP Library API Writing Guidelines].

Rules and recommendations which are "machine checkable" should be
tagged with an ID like +LTP-XXX+. There will be a corresponding entry
in
https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/tree/master/doc/rules.tsv[doc/rules.tsv]. When
you run 'make check' or 'make check-test' it will display these IDs as
a reference.

1. Guide to clean and understandable code
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For testcases it's required that the source code is as easy to follow as
possible. When a test starts to fail the failure has to be analyzed, clean
test codebase makes this task much easier and quicker.

Here are some hints on how to write clean and understandable code, a few of
these points are further discussed below:

* First of all *Keep things simple*

* Keep function and variable names short but descriptive

* Keep functions reasonably short and focused on a single task

* Do not overcomment

* Be consistent

* Avoid deep nesting

* DRY

1.1 Keep things simple
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For all it's worth keep the testcases simple or better as simple as possible.

The kernel and libc are tricky beasts and the complexity imposed by their
interfaces is quite high. Concentrate on the interface you want to test and
follow the UNIX philosophy.

It's a good idea to make the test as self-contained as possible too, ideally
tests should not depend on tools or libraries that are not widely available.

Do not reinvent the wheel!

* Use LTP standard interface

* Do not add custom PASS/FAIL reporting functions

* Do not write Makefiles from scratch, use LTP build system instead

* Etc.

1.2 Keep functions and variable names short
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Choosing a good name for an API functions or even variables is a difficult
task do not underestimate it.

There are a couple of customary names for different things that help people to
understand code, for example:

* For loop variables are usually named with a single letter 'i', 'j', ...

* File descriptors 'fd' or 'fd_foo'.

* Number of bytes stored in file are usually named as 'size' or 'len'

* Etc.

1.3 Do not overcomment
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments can sometimes save you day but they can easily do more harm than
good. There has been several cases where comments and actual implementation
drifted slowly apart which yielded into API misuses and hard to find bugs.
Remember there is only one thing worse than no documentation, wrong
documentation.

Ideally everybody should write code that is obvious, which unfortunately isn't
always possible. If there is a code that requires to be commented keep it
short and to the point. These comments should explain *why* and not *how*
things are done.

Never ever comment the obvious.

In case of LTP testcases it's customary to add an asciidoc formatted comment
paragraph with highlevel test description at the beginning of the file right
under the GPL SPDX header. This helps other people to understand the overall
goal of the test before they dive into the technical details. It's also
exported into generated documentation hence it should mostly explain what is
tested.

1.4 DRY (Code duplication)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Copy & paste is a good servant but very poor master. If you are about to copy a
large part of the code from one testcase to another, think what would happen if
you find bug in the code that has been copied all around the tree. What about
moving it to a library instead?

The same goes for short but complicated parts, whenever you are about to copy &
paste a syscall wrapper that packs arguments accordingly to machine
architecture or similarly complicated code, put it into a header instead.

2 Coding style
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2.1 C coding style
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

LTP adopted Linux kernel coding style:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/coding-style.html

If you aren't familiar with its rules please read it, it's a well written
introduction.

Run `make check` in the test's directory and/or use `make check-$TCID`,
it uses (among other checks) our vendored version of
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/plain/scripts/checkpatch.pl[checkpatch.pl]
script from kernel git tree.

NOTE: If `make check` does not report any problems, the code still may be wrong
      as all tools used for checking only look for common mistakes.

2.1.1 LTP-004: Test executable symbols are marked static
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Test executables should not export symbols unnecessarily. This means
that all top-level variables and functions should be marked with the
static keyword. The only visible symbols should be those included from
shared object files.

2.2 Shell coding style
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

When writing testcases in shell write in *portable shell* only, it's a good
idea to try to run the test using alternative shell (alternative to bash, for
example dash) too.

*Portable shell* means Shell Command Language as defined by POSIX with an
exception of few widely used extensions, namely 'local' keyword used inside of
functions and '-o' and '-a' test parameters (that are marked as obsolete in
POSIX).

You can either try to run the testcases on Debian which has '/bin/sh' pointing
to 'dash' by default or install 'dash' on your favorite distribution and use
it to run the tests. If your distribution lacks 'dash' package you can always
compile it from http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/dash/files/[source].

Run `make check` in the test's directory and/or use `make check-$TCID.sh`,
it uses (among other checks) our vendored version of
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/devscripts/raw/master/scripts/checkbashisms.pl[checkbashism.pl]
from Debian, that is used to check for non-portable shell code.

NOTE: If `make check` does not report any problems, the code still may be wrong
      as `checkbashisms.pl` used for checking only looks for common mistakes.

Here are some common sense style rules for shell

* Keep lines under 80 chars

* Use tabs for indentation

* Keep things simple, avoid unnecessary subshells

* Don't do confusing things (i.e. don't name your functions like common shell
  commands, etc.)

* Quote variables

* Be consistent

3 Backwards compatibility
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LTP test should be as backward compatible as possible. Think of an enterprise
distributions with long term support (more than five years since the initial
release) or of an embedded platform that needs to use several years old
toolchain supplied by the manufacturer.

Therefore LTP test for more current features should be able to cope with older
systems. It should at least compile fine and if it's not appropriate for the
configuration it should return 'TCONF'.

There are several types of checks we use:

The *configure script* is usually used to detect availability of a function
declarations in system headers. It's used to disable tests at compile time or
to enable fallback definitions.

Checking the *errno* value is another type of runtime check. Most of the
syscalls returns either 'EINVAL' or 'ENOSYS' when syscall was not implemented
or was disabled upon kernel compilation.

LTP has kernel version detection that can be used to disable tests at runtime,
unfortunately kernel version does not always corresponds to a well defined
feature set as distributions tend to backport hundreds of patches while the
kernel version stays the same. Use with caution.

Lately we added kernel '.config' parser, a test can define a boolean
expression of kernel config variables that has to be satisfied in order for a
test to run. This is mostly used for kernel namespaces at the moment.

Sometimes it also makes sense to define a few macros instead of creating
configure test. One example is Linux specific POSIX clock ids in
'include/lapi/posix_clocks.h'.

3.1 Dealing with messed up legacy code
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LTP still contains a lot of old and messy code and we are cleaning it up as
fast as we can but despite the decade of efforts there is still a lot. If you
start modifying old or a messy testcase and your changes are more complicated
than simple typo fixes you should convert the test into a new library first.

It's also much easier to review the changes if you split them into a smaller
logical groups. The same goes for moving files. If you need a rename or move
file do it in a separate patch.

4 License
~~~~~~~~~

Code contributed to LTP should be licensed under GPLv2+ (GNU GPL version 2 or
any later version).

Use `SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later`

5 LTP Structure
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The structure of LTP is quite simple. Each test is a binary written either in
portable shell or C. The test gets a configuration via environment variables
and/or command line parameters, it prints additional information into the
stdout and reports overall success/failure via the exit value.

Tests are generally placed under the 'testcases/' directory. Everything that
is a syscall or (slightly confusingly) libc syscall wrapper goes under
'testcases/kernel/syscalls/'.

Then there is 'testcases/open_posix_testsuite/' which is a well maintained fork
of the upstream project that has been dead since 2005 and also a number of
directories with tests for more specific features.

5.1 Runtest Files
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The list of tests to be executed is stored in runtest files under the
'runtest/' directory. The default set of runtest files to be executed is
stored in 'scenario_groups/default'. When you add a test you should add
corresponding entries into some runtest file(s) as well.

For syscall tests (these placed under 'testcases/kernel/syscalls/') use
'runtest/syscalls' file, for kernel related tests for memory management we
have 'runtest/mm', etc.

IMPORTANT: The runtest files should have one entry per a test. Creating a
           wrapper that runs all your tests and adding it as a single test
           into runtest file is strongly discouraged.

5.2 Datafiles
^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If your test needs datafiles to work, these should be put into a subdirectory
named 'datafiles' and installed into the 'testcases/data/$TCID' directory (to
do that you have to add 'INSTALL_DIR := testcases/data/TCID' into the
'datafiles/Makefile').

You can obtain path to datafiles via $TST_DATAROOT provided by test.sh
'$TST_DATAROOT/...'
or via C function 'tst_dataroot()' provided by libltp:

[source,c]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
const char *dataroot = tst_dataroot();
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Datafiles can also be accessed as '$LTPROOT/testcases/data/$TCID/...',
but '$TST_DATAROOT' and 'tst_dataroot()' are preferred as these can be used
when running testcases directly in git tree as well as from install
location.

The path is constructed according to these rules:

1. if '$LTPROOT' is set, return '$LTPROOT/testcases/data/$TCID'
2. else if 'tst_tmpdir()' was called return '$STARTWD/datafiles'
   (where '$STARTWD' is initial working directory as recorded by 'tst_tmpdir()')
3. else return '$CWD/datafiles'

See 'testcases/commands/file/' for example.

5.3 Subexecutables
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If your test needs to execute a binary, place it in the same directory as the
testcase and name the file starting with '${test_binary_name}_'.  Once the
test is executed by the framework, the path to the directory with all LTP
binaries is added to the '$PATH' and you can execute it just by its name.

TIP: If you need to execute such test from the LTP tree, you can add path to
     current directory to '$PATH' manually with: 'PATH="$PATH:$PWD" ./foo01'.

6 Test Contribution Checklist
------------------------------

NOTE: See also
      https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/Maintainer-Patch-Review-Checklist[Maintainer Patch Review Checklist].

1. Test compiles and runs fine (check with `-i 10` too)
2. `make check` does not emit any warnings for the test you are working on
   (hint: run it in the test's directory and/or use `make check-$TCID`)
3. The runtest entries are in place
4. Test binaries are added into corresponding '.gitignore' files
5. Patches apply over the latest git

6.1 About .gitignore files
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are numerous '.gitignore' files in the LTP tree. Usually there is a
'.gitignore' file per a group of tests. The reason for this setup is simple.
It's easier to maintain a '.gitignore' file per directory with tests, rather
than having single file in the project root directory. This way, we don't have
to update all the gitignore files when moving directories, and they get deleted
automatically when a directory with tests is removed.

7 Testing pre-release kernel features
-------------------------------------

Tests for features not yet in a mainline kernel release are accepted. However
they must only be added to the +staging+ runtest file. Once a feature is part
of the stable kernel ABI the associated test must be moved out of staging.

This is primarily to help test kernel RCs by avoiding the need to download
separate LTP patchsets.

8 LTP C And Shell Test API Comparison
-------------------------------------

Comparison of
https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/C-Test-API[C Test API] and
https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki/Shell-Test-API[Shell Test API].

[options="header"]
|================================================================================
|  C API ('struct tst_test' members) | shell API ('$TST_*' environment variables)
| '.all_filesystems' | 'TST_ALL_FILESYSTEMS'
| '.bufs' | –
| '.caps' | –
| '.child_needs_reinit' | not applicable
| '.cleanup' | 'TST_CLEANUP'
| '.dev_extra_opts' | 'TST_DEV_EXTRA_OPTS'
| '.dev_fs_opts' | 'TST_DEV_FS_OPTS'
| '.dev_fs_type' | 'TST_FS_TYPE'
| '.dev_min_size' | not applicable
| '.format_device' | 'TST_FORMAT_DEVICE'
| '.max_runtime' | –
| '.min_cpus' | not applicable
| '.min_kver' | 'TST_MIN_KVER'
| '.min_mem_avail' | not applicable
| '.mnt_flags' | 'TST_MNT_PARAMS'
| '.min_swap_avail' | not applicable
| '.mntpoint', '.mnt_data' | 'TST_MNTPOINT'
| '.mount_device' | 'TST_MOUNT_DEVICE'
| '.needs_cgroup_ctrls' | –
| '.needs_checkpoints' | 'TST_NEEDS_CHECKPOINTS'
| '.needs_cmds' | 'TST_NEEDS_CMDS'
| '.needs_devfs' | –
| '.needs_device' | 'TST_NEEDS_DEVICE'
| '.needs_drivers' | 'TST_NEEDS_DRIVERS'
| '.needs_kconfigs' | 'TST_NEEDS_KCONFIGS'
| '.needs_overlay' |
| '.needs_rofs' | –
| '.needs_root' | 'TST_NEEDS_ROOT'
| '.needs_tmpdir' | 'TST_NEEDS_TMPDIR'
| '.options' | 'TST_PARSE_ARGS', 'TST_OPTS'
| '.resource_files' | –
| '.restore_wallclock' | not applicable
| '.sample' | –
| '.save_restore' | –
| '.scall' | not applicable
| '.setup' | 'TST_SETUP'
| '.skip_filesystems' | 'TST_SKIP_FILESYSTEMS'
| '.skip_in_compat' | –
| '.skip_in_lockdown' | 'TST_SKIP_IN_LOCKDOWN'
| '.skip_in_secureboot' | 'TST_SKIP_IN_SECUREBOOT'
| '.supported_archs' | not applicable
| '.tags' | –
| '.taint_check' | –
| '.tcnt' | 'TST_CNT'
| '.tconf_msg' | not applicable
| '.test', '.test_all' | 'TST_TESTFUNC'
| '.test_variants' | –
| '.timeout' | 'TST_TIMEOUT'
| '.tst_hugepage' | not applicable
| .format_device | 'TST_DEVICE'
| not applicable | 'TST_NEEDS_KCONFIGS_IFS'
| not applicable | 'TST_NEEDS_MODULE'
| not applicable | 'TST_POS_ARGS'
| not applicable | 'TST_USAGE'
|================================================================================