vtest status

[Frederic Lecaille]

On 1/9/19 11:36 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> --------
> In message <58d74416-8e0f-4a35-bb7c-67f02a680fdc at haproxy.com>, Frederic Lecaille writes:
> 
>> I hope everything is going well on your side.
> 
> Well, getting better:  One of my close friends died from stomach-cancer
> right before X-mas and that threw all plans askew.
> 
>> So, if you need some help to make vtest project progress, please
>> do not hesitate to ask.
> 
> I think what we need most right now, is to decide what shape vtest
> should take?

Yes!

> I want to stress that I want this to be a collective decision,
> so don't take anything I write here as edict or diktat.
> 
> Personally I am not very keen on turning vtest a "real" project
> with releases, package-building and all that, because it would cause
> me a lot of work which I don't think brings enough advantages.
> 
> The problem for me is that vtc_varnish has a very incestuos
> relationship with varnish internals, internals which we do not want
> to turn into documented or even open APIs, and that means that
> vtc_varnish and varnishd must match versions.
> 
> A stand-alone vtest-package would either need to be compiled against
> a specific version of varnish, or have some way to dynamically load
> vtc_varnish from from the varnish source/package it is being used
> against.
> 
> But that just moves the problem to the other side of the line, where
> we need to open the internals of vtest up as a documented and
> versioned API...
> 
> Some day (H3?) all that work may make sense, but I don't feel we
> are there yet, at least not as far as cost/benefit is concerned.
> 
> My suggestion for now, is to let vtest live as a "source code
> library" on github and not build and distribute it as stand-alone
> packages.

Currently, vtest convert.sh script make copies of lib/libvarnish/*.c
which are already compiled when compiling varnish sources providing
lib/libvarnish.a library.

Could not this vtest library be compiled against lib/libvarnish.a
library?

> Instead it will be up to the projects which use it to import
> and build in their own projects.
> 
> That way HAproxy and leave vtc_varnish out of their compilation so
> varnish does not become a build-dependency (or you can conditionally
> compile vtc_varnish in, if it is already there.)
> 
> And we can compile it in Varnish including vtc_varnish, and include
> vtc_haproxy in similar fashion. (actually, compilation of
> vtc_haproxy does not need haproxy to be installed, does it ?)

Of course not, it does not.

> We should still provide a Makefile in the vtest github project which
> compiles as much as possible (ie: vtc_varnish if it can find varnish
> installed), that will make work on the shared sources easier for
> all of us.

Yes, I agree.

> If we decide to do things that way, maybe you should call your
> compiled version something like "hatest", while we stick with
> "varnishtest", so we can reserve the "vtest" name for the future
> runtime-extensible all-singing-and-dancing thing ?

All these information sound fair to me.

As far as we do not have to make copies of file from varnish sources
to compile vtest this would help to its maintenance.


Fred.