[Ksummit-discuss] kselftest - What's in 3.17 and plans for 3.18 and beyond

[Shuah Khan <shuah.kh@samsung.com>]

As a first step towards a larger goal to enable developer
friendly kernel testing framework, a new make target is
planned for 3.17. In addition, 3.17 includes work done to
fix tools/testing/sefltests to run without failures.

Short summary of work done so far for 3.17:

- fix compile errors and warnings in various tests
- fix run-time errors when tests aren't run as root
- enhance and improve cpu and memory hot-plug tests
   to run in limited scope mode by default. A new make
   target to select full-scope testing. Prior to this
   change, cpu and memory hot-plug tests hung trying to
   hot-plug all but cpu0 and a large portion of the memory.
- add a new kselftest target to run existing selftests
   to start with.

What's planned for 3.18 and beyond:

- get feedback on the new kselftest target from the community
- add more tests to be run under kselftest umbrella
- identify existing tests under /lib and other areas that
   make a good candidate to be included under kselftest
- Some of these could be run as a tool and/or a independent
   test with a few changes and some probably aren't like the
   /lib/locking tests.
- As a goal, try to leverage existing tests and modify them
   as needed to run them as a black-box test (e.g: look into
   ways to make it run as a tool)
- Greg KH sparked the kernel selftest idea, has been in the loop
   for the work done so far, and reviewed the plan for 3.18.

thanks,
-- Shuah

Shuah Khan
Senior Linux Kernel Developer - Open Source Group
Samsung Research America(Silicon Valley)
shuah.kh@samsung.com | (970) 672-0658