Re: [RFC 1/1] acceptance tests: rename acceptance to system

[Thomas Huth]

On 20/05/2021 22.28, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> On 5/20/21 9:53 PM, Willian Rampazzo wrote:
> > Conceptually speaking, acceptance tests "are a series of specific tests
> > conducted by the customer in an attempt to uncover product errors before
> > accepting the software from the developer. Conducted by the end-user rather
> > than software engineers, acceptance testing can range from an informal
> > “test drive” to a planned and systematically executed series of scripted
> > tests" [1]. Every time Pressman refers to the term "acceptance testing," he
> > also refers to user's agreement in the final state of an implemented feature.
> > Today, QEMU is not implementing user acceptance tests as described by Pressman.
> >
> > There are other three possible terms we could use to describe what is currently
> > QEMU "acceptance" tests:
> >
> >    1 - Integration tests:
> >        - "Integration testing is a systematic technique for constructing the
> >           software architecture while at the same time conducting tests to
> >           uncover errors associated with interfacing. The objective is to take
> >           unit-tested components and build a program structure that has been
> >           dictated by design." [2]
> >        * Note: Sommerville does not have a clear definition of integration
> >          testing. He refers to incremental integration of components inside
> >          the system testing (see [3]).

After thinking about this for a while, I agree with you that renaming the 
"acceptance" tests to "integration" tests is also not a good idea. When I 
hear "integration" test in the context of the virt stack, I'd rather expect 
a test suite that picks KVM (i.e. a kernel), QEMU, libvirt and maybe 
virt-manager on top and tests them all together. So we should look for a 
different name indeed.

> >    2 - Validation tests:
> >        - "Validation testing begins at the culmination of integration testing,
> >           when individual components have been exercised, the software is
> >           completely assembled as a package, and interfacing errors have been
> >           uncovered and corrected. At the validation or system level, the
> >           distinction between different software categories disappears. Testing
> >           focuses on user-visible actions and user-recognizable output from the
> >           system." [4]
> >        - "where you expect the system to perform correctly using a set of test
> >           cases that reflect the system’s expected use." [5]
> >        * Note: the definition of "validation testing" from Sommerville reflects
> >          the same definition found around the Internet, as one of the processes
> >          inside the "Verification & Validation (V&V)." In this concept,
> >          validation testing is a high-level definition that covers unit testing,
> >          functional testing, integration testing, system testing, and acceptance
> >          testing.
> >
> >    3 - System tests:
> >        - "verifies that all elements mesh properly and that overall system
> >           function and performance is achieved." [6]
> >        - "involves integrating components to create a version of the system and
> >           then testing the integrated system. System testing checks that
> >           components are compatible, interact correctly, and transfer the right
> >           data at the right time across their interfaces." [7]
> >
> > The tests implemented inside the QEMU "acceptance" directory depend on the
> > software completely assembled and, sometimes, on other elements, like operating
> > system images. In this case, the proposal here is to rename the current
> > "acceptance" directory to "system."
>
> Are user-mode tests using Avocado also system tests?
> https://www.mail-archive.com/qemu-devel@nongnu.org/msg782505.html

We've indeed got the problem that the word "system" is a little bit 
overloaded in the context of QEMU. We often talk about "system" when 
referring to the qemu-softmmu-xxx emulators (in contrast to the linux-user 
emulator binaries). For example, the "--disable-system" switch of the 
configure script, or the "build-system" and "check-system" jobs in the 
.gitlab-ci.yml file ... thus this could get quite confusing in the 
.gitlab-ci.yml file afterwards.

So I think renaming "acceptance" to "system" is especially ok if we only 
keep the "softmmu"-related tests in that folder... would it maybe make sense 
to add the linux-user related tests in a separate folder called tests/user/ 
instead, Philippe? And we should likely rename the current build-system and 
check-system jobs in our gitlab-CI to build-softmmu and check-softmmu or so?

Alternatively, what about renaming the "acceptance" tests to "validation" 
instead? That word does not have a duplicated definition in the context of 
QEMU yet, so I think it would be less confusing.

 Thomas