[Wikitech-l] Assumptions for development machines (w.r.t. to test infrastructure)
I'm starting a new thread because I noticed my news reader has glued together messages with the title A potential land mine and MW test infrastructure architecture, which may confuse someone coming into the discussion late. Also, the previous thread has branched into several topics and I want to concentrate on only one, specifically what can we assume about the system environment for a test infrastructure? These assumptions have direct impact on what test harness we use. Let me start by stating what I think can be assumed. Then people can tell me I am full of beans, add to the assumptions, subtract from them, etc. The first thing I would assume is that a development system is less constrained than a production system in what can and what cannot be installed. For example, people shot down my proposal to automatically discover the MW root directory because some production systems have administrators without root access, without the ability to load code into the PEAR directory, etc. Fair enough (although minimizing the number of places where $IP is computed is still important). However, if you are doing MW development, then I think this assumption is too stringent. You need to run the tests in /tests/PHPUnitTests, which in at least one case requires the use of $wgDBadminuser and $wgDBadminpassword, something a non-priviledged user would not be allowed to do. If a developer has more system privileges than a production admin, to what extent? Can we assume he has root access? If not, can we assume he can get someone who has to do things like install PHPUnit? Can we assume the availability of PERL or should we only assume PHP? Can we assume *AMP (e.g., LAMP, WAMP, MAMP, XAMP)? Can we assume PEAR? Can the developer install into PEAR? Dan ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Assumptions for development machines (w.r.t. to test infrastructure)
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 10:59 AM, dan nessettdness...@yahoo.com wrote: I'm starting a new thread because I noticed my news reader has glued together messages with the title A potential land mine and MW test infrastructure architecture, which may confuse someone coming into the discussion late. Also, the previous thread has branched into several topics and I want to concentrate on only one, specifically what can we assume about the system environment for a test infrastructure? These assumptions have direct impact on what test harness we use. Let me start by stating what I think can be assumed. Then people can tell me I am full of beans, add to the assumptions, subtract from them, etc. The first thing I would assume is that a development system is less constrained than a production system in what can and what cannot be installed. For example, people shot down my proposal to automatically discover the MW root directory because some production systems have administrators without root access, without the ability to load code into the PEAR directory, etc. Fair enough (although minimizing the number of places where $IP is computed is still important). However, if you are doing MW development, then I think this assumption is too stringent. You need to run the tests in /tests/PHPUnitTests, which in at least one case requires the use of $wgDBadminuser and $wgDBadminpassword, something a non-priviledged user would not be allowed to do. If a developer has more system privileges than a production admin, to what extent? Can we assume he has root access? If not, can we assume he can get someone who has to do things like install PHPUnit? Can we assume the availability of PERL or should we only assume PHP? Can we assume *AMP (e.g., LAMP, WAMP, MAMP, XAMP)? Can we assume PEAR? Can the developer install into PEAR? Dan ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l Tests should run in a vanilla install, with minimal dependency on external stuff. PHPUnit (or whatever framework we use) would be considered an acceptable dependency for test suites. If PHPUnit isn't available (ie: already installed and in the include path), then we should bail out nicely. In general, external dependencies should be used as seamlessly as possible, with minimal involvement from the end-user. A good example is wikidiff2...we load it if it exists, we fail back to PHP diff mode if we can't use it. -Chad ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Assumptions for development machines (w.r.t. to test infrastructure)
--- On Wed, 8/12/09, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: Tests should run in a vanilla install, with minimal dependency on external stuff. PHPUnit (or whatever framework we use) would be considered an acceptable dependency for test suites. If PHPUnit isn't available (ie: already installed and in the include path), then we should bail out nicely. In general, external dependencies should be used as seamlessly as possible, with minimal involvement from the end-user. A good example is wikidiff2...we load it if it exists, we fail back to PHP diff mode if we can't use it. OK, graceful backout if an external dependency fails and minimal dependency on external stuff. So far we have two categories of proposal for test infrastructure : 1) build it all ourselves, and 2) use some external stuff. How do we decide which to do? Dan ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Assumptions for development machines (w.r.t. to test infrastructure)
On 8/12/09 9:51 AM, dan nessett wrote: --- On Wed, 8/12/09, Brion Vibberbr...@wikimedia.org wrote: We *already* automatically discover the MW root directory. Yes, you're right. I should have said automatically discover the MW root directory without using file position dependent code. The suggestions were for explicit manual configuration, not autodiscovery. Autodiscovery means *not* having to set anything. :) -- brion ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Assumptions for development machines (w.r.t. to test infrastructure)
--- On Wed, 8/12/09, Brion Vibber br...@wikimedia.org wrote: The suggestions were for explicit manual configuration, not autodiscovery. Autodiscovery means *not* having to set anything. :) I am insane to keep this going, but the proposal I made did not require doing anything manually (other than running the install script, which you have to do anyway). The install script knows (or can find out) where the MW root is located. It could then either: 1) rewrite php.ini to concatenate the location of MWInit.php at the end of include_path, or 2) plop MWInit.php into a directory already searched by PHP for includes/requires (e.g., the PEAR) directory. I gave up on the proposal when people pointed out that MW admins may not have the privileges that would allow the install script to do either. Dan ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Assumptions for development machines (w.r.t. to test infrastructure)
--- On Wed, 8/12/09, Roan Kattouw roan.katt...@gmail.com wrote: On shared hosting, both are impossible. MediaWiki currently works with minimal write access requirements (only the config/ directory for the installer and the images/ directory if you want uploads), and we'd like to keep it that way for people who are condemned to shared hosting. Which is why I wrote in the message that is the subject of your reply: I gave up on the proposal when people pointed out that MW admins may not have the privileges that would allow the install script to do either. Dan ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Assumptions for development machines (w.r.t. to test infrastructure)
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 10:59 AM, dan nessettdness...@yahoo.com wrote: If a developer has more system privileges than a production admin, to what extent? Can we assume he has root access? If not, can we assume he can get someone who has to do things like install PHPUnit? Can we assume the availability of PERL or should we only assume PHP? Can we assume *AMP (e.g., LAMP, WAMP, MAMP, XAMP)? Can we assume PEAR? Can the developer install into PEAR? We should *try* to have no extra dependencies. Every extra dependency means fewer people will be able to run the tests. If a reasonable dependency would gain us a lot in some other way, that might be acceptable, depending on what we actually gain from it. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
