[Gnash-dev] network testing with multiple processes

[Rob Savoye]

Some time ago there was discussion about how to do network testing for
Gnash & Cygnal. I just checked in support for Cygnal testing that does
this by firing up Cygnal, creates some test files, and then uses wget to
make the GET requests to Cygnal. It does this by monitoring both the
wget and the Cygnal processes at the same time.

As we use DejaGnu, which uses expect for controlling child processes, we
can "spawn" multiple processes, and monitor the output of all of them to
determine what happened. For example, I just run "wget -v", and the
normal wget messages are all I need to determine if it worked. Same for
Cygnal, I just run it in verbose mode, with the root directory for files
pointing at a tmp directory full of dynamically created files.

We should be able to do the same thing for Gnash testing, and use
apache, Red5, or Cygnal for the servers. Right now this is in the 'rtmp'
branch on savannah for anyone that wants to see how to do more of this
type of thing.

Cygnal is slowly coming along, and currently functions as a HTTP/RTMPT
server. It can run both single threaded or multi threaded, although I'm
still developing the threaded version more now that I can test it
better. I've come up with a hybrid network engine that should scale
nicely on multicore systems.

btw, I need a good testcase for RTMPT (transferring AMF over HTTP)
that'll compile with Ming for testing the new RTMPT support I've added
to Cygnal if anyone has the time... Red5 has a good one, but it requires
server side support custom to Red5 (in java), and being swf v9, doesn't
work well enough with Gnash to do me any good. :-(

        - rob -