I have been tasked to evaluate whether we can use the parserTests db code for the selenium framework. I just looked it over and have serious reservations. I would appreciate any comments on the following analysis.
The environment for selenium tests is different than that for parserTests. It is envisioned that multiple concurrent tests could run using the same MW code base. Consequently, each test run must: + Use a db that if written to will not destroy other test wiki information. + Switch in a new images and math directory so any writes do not interfere with other tests. + Maintain the integrity of the cache. Note that tests would *never* run on a production wiki (it may be possible to do so if they do no writes, but safety considerations suggest they should always run on a test data, not production data). In fact production wikis should always retain the setting $wgEnableSelenium = false, to ensure selenium test are disabled. Given this background, consider the following (and feel free to comment on it): parserTests temporary table code: A fixed set of tables are specified in the code. parserTests creates temporary tables with the same name, but using a different static prefix. These tables are used for the parserTests run. Problems using this approach for selenium tests: + Selenium tests on extensions may require use of extension specific tables, the names of which cannot be elaborated in the code. + Concurrent test runs of parserTests are not supported, since the temporary tables have fixed names and therefore concurrent writes to them by parallel test runs would cause interference. + Clean up from aborted runs requires dropping fossil tables. But, if a previous run tested an extension with extension-specific tables, there is no way for a test of some other functionality to figure out which tables to drop. For these reasons, I don't think we can reuse the parserTests code. However, I am open to arguments to the contrary. -- -- Dan Nessett _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
