adt-testreport-onepackage

adt-testreport-onepackage - choose one package and test it with adt-run

adt-testreport-onepackage [variable=value|settings-file]...

adt-testreport-onepackage is a rather ad-hoc script which chooses a package to test, calls adt-run, and reports the results. a-t-o has the following functionality: a-t-o downloads the Sources file, chooses a package to test (see below), downloads its source, invokes adt-run, writes a report describing the outcome, and emails the report to some appropriate address. WARNING - it is essential to reconfigure this program before use, as the supplied examples will send emails to people who will become very upset with you!

Command-line arguments containing = are interpreted by a-t-o with eval; other arguments are sourced using ., in each case interpreted as bash script. Configuration fragment authors should bear in mind that a-t-o uses set -e. Various variables can be set for useful effect. A selection of the most usual ones, with default values, can be seen at the top of the a-t-o script itself. Certain others are mentioned in this manpage. There is no exhaustive list and no documentation of the semantics.

a-t-o maintains a record of when each package was last tested, what version was tested, and whether the package had any tests. This record is used to choose which package should be tested next: packages which have changed since the last test are preferred, as are packages which didn't lack tests last time they were examined. If the configuration sets pkg to a package name (for example by passing pkg=package-name), this overrides a-t-o's package selection algorithm.

If interactive is set to true (the default), a-t-o will not redirect the output from adt-run and will not email anyone, although the start of the email which would have been sent is sent to stdout. If interactive is false, a-t-o sends an email to its administrator (if a-t-o considers that the testing machinery is broken, or if maintainer_email_override is set), or otherwise to the package maintainer. No email is sent if there were no tests, or all the tests skipped or passed. The emailed report contains a summary of the outcome of the tests, and the output from adt-run. Additionally, if an email is sent, the build trees, test results, and so forth, will be uploaded to the location specified with the dest* options (see the onepackage-config example configuration file). Some vague progress information is printed to a-t-o's stdout.

The tmp=tmp and var=var configuration variables name two directories which must belong solely to this instance of a-t-o. tmp will be erased by a-t-o at startup and then used for temporary files. It is not cleaned up afterwards; it is assumed that the next run of a-t-o will do that. var is used to record the state, including the information about each package used for package selection. var/log contains a one-line record of each test run and may need to be rotated. tmp and var default to tmp and var in a-t-o's starting directory.

0 a package was apparently tested
20 adt-run reported an unexpected failure
other other unexpected failures including bad usage, disk full, etc. When a-t-o is run in a loop, the loop should stop pending administrator intervention if a-t-o exits nonzero.

It is essential not to use the example configuration! This configuration is likely to send inappropriate emails! There is no documentation for the variable settings, and no error handling for detecting attempts to set incorrectly named variables. The tuning parameters for the package selection algorithm cannot be adjusted. This algorithm is not hugely sophisticated. There should be a facility for explicitly requesting retests (other than setting pkg); there should be some kind of manual prioritisation queue. a-t-o cannot choose a distrorelease (eg, dapper, feisty, etch, sid) or suite (eg main, non-free, universe); the caller must do that. Configuration by the use of bash fragments is rather unsophisticated. The script lacks flexibility in many respects; many additional configuration settings and hooks are needed.

This manpage is part of autopkgtest, a tool for testing Debian binary packages. autopkgtest is Copyright (C) 2006-2007 Canonical Ltd and others. See /usr/share/doc/autopkgtest/CREDITS for the list of contributors and full copying conditions.