Re: [lmi] Preserving configurable settings after GUI test

[Greg Chicares]

On 2018-07-03 00:01, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
> 
>  There is a long standing TODO item about preserving the contents of
> configurable_settings.xml file after running the GUI unit test

Here's a separate, brand-new issue: apparently a race condition when
the GUI test is run concurrently with other tests (with origin/master,
without the patch you proposed):

/opt/lmi/src/lmi[0]$./nychthemeral_test.sh 2>&1 | tee /tmp/lmi/logs/log | sed 
-f errors.sed
Production system built--ready to start GUI test in another session.
Unable to parse xml file 'Z:/opt/lmi/data/configurable_settings.xml': Document 
is empty
[xml_lmi.cpp : 69]
Instantiation failed.
[configurable_settings.cpp : 182]
/opt/lmi/src/lmi/workhorse.make:1435: recipe for target 
'/opt/lmi/test/REDACTED.ill' failed
make[2]: [/opt/lmi/test/REDACTED.ill] Error 1 (ignored)
Cannot open REDACTED.*test
Files /opt/lmi/test/md5sums-20180719T1442Z and /opt/lmi/touchstone/md5sums 
differ
*** System test failed ***
  1511 system-test files compared
  1510 system-test files match
  1 system-test files differ
  1 system-test files missing
...system test completed.
Do not forget to run wx_test.

It has been my habit to start the nychthemeral test, wait for the
first line it prints above, and then start the GUI test in another
session. This is the first time I've seen this problem, but it can
occur at any time: lmi binaries require that xml file, but they
might try to read it exactly when the GUI test is in the process
of modifying it.

That's a shame, because it's very convenient to run all tests this
way. The GUI test is by its nature fragile in the sense that it
needs complete control over the console, so I run it manually; and
it's slow enough that I like to run other tests in the background
at the same time.

Maybe the answer is to virtualize the xml file, using, say,
  /opt/lmi/wherever/gui_test/configurable_settings.xml
for the GUI test only. IIRC, I recently provided read-only access
to its default pathname; for this special purpose, it may be better
to provide a different pathname.

Before considering such a new change, we need to finish work on
this month's release, and then update the wx* libraries and test
the PDF pagination changes.