Creating atf-based tests for NetBSD src (new tutorial)

Dear readers,

With this post, I would like to announce the availability of the atf tutorial published on the wiki!

This new document intends to aid NetBSD developers in writing atf-based tests for the NetBSD source tree. It does so by providing a description of the basic concepts behind the atf design and listing what the necessary steps are to write an atf-based test for the NetBSD source tree. The tutorial also includes several code snippets ready to be copy/pasted into your own code, some reference sections for common functions and a short FAQ section for common concerns raised by users of the framework.

The tutorial comes to fill an important gap in achieving wide acceptance of atf among NetBSD developers. Some of us have been trying to migrate old regress tests to the new atf framework for a while, but such efforts are futile if other developers keep submitting new tests to the obsolete regress tree. However, such developers have been doing so because the atf documentation is not yet up to the task to guide a new developer into writing a test program for NetBSD. I expect this new tutorial to cover this gap and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Comments will be highly appreciated!

Lastly, I want to give special thanks to Antti Kantee for the multiple rounds of reviews and suggestions on the text.

References

• The tutorial: Creating atf-based tests for NetBSD src
• Automated Testing Framework website