getting users involved in on-device testing

[Michal Hrusecky]

John Crispin -  9:39  5.05.16 wrote:
> 
> 
> On 05/05/2016 09:10, Michal Hrusecky wrote:
> > John Crispin -  8:56  5.05.16 wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> It would be nice if there was a process in place that would allow
> >> community members to easily be able to test images on devices and report
> >> the results some place. after some time thinking of different ways to do
> >> this I came up with one possible solution and wanted to know what others
> >> think about this.
> >>
> >> we setup a file similar to how the MAINTAINERS file in the kernel.
> >> anyone can add his name/email and boards he would like to be a tester
> >> of. every time an image is built for said board, an email is generated
> >> and sent out to the according persons. this email would contains an otp.
> >> with this credential you could then log into some web frontend and get a
> >> simple mask along the lines of
> >>
> >> * wifi worked
> >> * ethernet worked
> >> * leds worked
> >> * buttons worked
> >> * iperf
> >> * ssl benchmark
> >> ...
> >>
> >> this could all be done in a rather trivial manner and i dont think the
> >> work behind such a setup is really that huge. using otps would for
> >> example eliminate the need for user credential management. results could
> >> simply be stored in files on the backend and then harvested later by a
> >> secondary script etc etc...
> >>
> >> next it would be possible to generate static content based on aggregated
> >> data that will show a traffic light style support status for various
> >> boards, listing when it was last tested, with what revision and what the
> >> test results were.
> >>
> >> would something like this make sense ?
> > 
> > It kinda makes sense, although it would be even nicer if the tests were
> > automated as well. That is something that Purple is working on. There is a
> > BoardFarm[1] test framework that is designed to test routers and there could be
> > created test suites that reflects some of the criteria you described and in the
> > best case, whenever image is produced, automatic test could be triggered and
> > results uploaded. It outputs junit and there is plenty of parsers of junit - we
> > have it nicely integrated in Jenkins.
> > 
> > [1] https://github.com/qca/boardfarm
> 
> i doubt they will test the 900+ boards. i would expect them to test
> their own boards.

Yes, they probably wouldn't but as the software is opensource anybody can
deploy it and test his router. And they might end up have at some point test
results for tenths of routers. The project is just starting.
 
> additionally the proposal does not tell you how to test. it describes a
> way to notify when testing is required and where the images are located.
> i think you misread/understood the purpose of what i proposed or i
> worded it badly.

Yep I understand, I think that it is good idea. My mail was just to bring
awareness that there is something that can be used quite nicely on the
receiving end of those notifications to automate/speed up the testing and make
it easier. So making it easy to reply automatically would be nice ;-) And also
that it might be worth talking to and joining efforts with Prpl or Eric.

Just to note that there is somebody trying to achieve pretty much similar
results - having an idea how well OpenWRT/LEDE works on various routers ;-)