ExternalTests

External Downloadable Tests

As well as executing builtin tests it is possible to execute external tests. This allows non-standard tests to be constructed and tested without any requirement to modify the installed autotest client.

Executing Tests

A downloadable test is triggered and run in the standard way via the run_test method, but specifying a URL to a tarball of the test:

job.run_test('http://www.example.com/~someone/somewhere/test.tar.bz2')

This will download, install, and execute the test as if it were builtin.

Constructing external downloadable tests

External downloadable tests consist of a bzip'ed tarball of the contents of a test directory. Things that need to match:

1. The name of the tarball
2. The name of the primary .py file
3. The name of the test class itself

Example:

$ cat foo/foo.py
from autotest_lib.client.bin import test

class foo(test.test):
    version = 1

    def initialize(self):
        print "INIT"

    def run_once(self):
        print "RUN"
$ tar -C foo -jcvf foo.tar.bz2 .
./
./foo.py
$ 

Again, notice that you should not pack "foo" dir but the contents of it. Files must be at the "root" of the package.