Re: [Xen-devel] [OSSTEST PATCH RFC 01/14] ts-xen-build: always compile in FEP support

[Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/08/16 13:03, Wei Liu wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 04, 2016 at 12:53:33PM +0100, Andrew Cooper wrote:
>> On 04/08/16 12:46, Ian Jackson wrote:
>>> Wei Liu writes ("[OSSTEST PATCH RFC 01/14] ts-xen-build: always compile in 
>>> FEP support"):
>>>> By default FEP depends on debug flag. When we are near release the debug
>>>> flag will be turned off. In order to test a release build, we explicitly
>>>> enable FEP in build configuration.
>>>>
>>>> Since we target Xen versions that already have Kconfig support, only a
>>>> Kconfig option is created for now.
>>> What do you mean by "we target" ?  osstest needs to support all
>>> versions of Xen which are still in security support, which goes back
>>> to 4.4 right now.
>> Xen 4.8 will have CONFIG_HVM_FEP available, and the hvm_fep command line
>> option is available irrespective of whether it is a debug build of the
>> hypervisor.
>>
>> Xen 4.5-4.7 have hvm_fep available on the command line, strictly for
>> debug builds of Xen only.
>>
>> Older versions have no FEP support at all.
>>
>>
>> XTF tests which require FEP to function will probe and SKIP if support
>> is not available.  This does mean that some tests can only sensibly work
>> against newer hypervisors.
>>
> In that case I think I would just abolish the fep test? Currently if
> hypervisor doesn't support fep, the whole job is aborted.

For just running tests normally, you shouldn't need to test for fep.

Some of the functional tests which compare Xen's emulated behaviour to
real hardware have an algorithm which runs first against real hardware,
then emulated (usually via fep).  For these tests, the first half will
always run (and may fail if the test is broken), and then either skip or
run the fep part of the test.

These are still worth running even if fep is unavailable, as it still
runs the first half against real hardware.


However, it might be useful to confirm that fep doesn't accidentally
disappear, or a load of tests which were previously passing will turn
into skip, which I presume OSSTest isn't going to be overly concerned with.

~Andrew

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