Re: [Stp-devel] [Crucible-devel] [judith@osdl.org: Re: [Autotest] Re: OSDL Proposed Extensions to TRPI Schema]

[Dustin K. <dus...@us...>]

On Fri, 2006-06-23 at 12:14 -0700, Martin Bligh wrote:
> Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > It would be nice to see autotest take an open view of this work, yet the
> > reason we cc'd the autotest list was not to suggest that autotest adopt
> > it, but primarily because we know folks at IBM and other companies were
> > interested in mechanisms like this to enable easier exchanging of test
> > data, and might like the opportunity to suggest improvements to the
> > format.
> 
> Nah, I'm not worried about it (or intending to do it). It could always
> be post-processed by a external package if you really wanted to. Just
> was outlining why I thought it was unnecessary.

Historically, I've been partial to tests that output flat text.  That
said, I usually hack up some perl after the fact to process the data as
I see fit.  The flexibility I get out of perl/grep/awk/sed and flat text
is something I would hate to give up.

On the other hand, let me say that I do recognize the rich flavor of
data encapsulated within and described by XML.  And I certainly see
where data marked up as such could provide a value-add to many (though
not all) test results consumers.

Unfortunately, I'm not previously familiar with the TRPI schema, so I
have little perspective to give on the proposed changes.  I do, however,
have a few questions, which are along the lines of Martin's comment...  
        - Where in the grand chain of test tools and infrastructure do
        you intend this functionality to live?
        - Is it to be implemented, as Martin suggests, as a
        post-processor, consuming established log formats (such as the
        LTP's) and producing fully decorated XML results?
        - Or do you suggest extending test suites to also support
        (hopefully not entirely replacing) directly producing TRPI
        results?
        - Is anything required of autotest in this space or was is this
        thread purely informational?




:-Dustin

p.s. What a garbled subject line :-)