AutoDistUpgradeTestingSpec

Revision 2 as of 2006-06-09 17:31:12

Clear message

Summary

Automatic testing if upgrades from the current to the next release work.

Rationale

During the development of the dist-upgrader it turned out that a lot of bugs were found by users (the hard way) that could have been easily found with automated testing (post-inst failing, file overwrite problems).

Use cases

Package A overwrites files in package B without declaring a conflict. Package C has a failing postinst script on the dapper upgrade that only fails if the upgrade happens from the particular version in breezy.

Scope

Initially it should test upgradability of {ubuntu,kubuntu,xubuntu}-desktop, then most of main, then selected ranges of universe. Failures must be reported automatically via mail.

Design

Use the dist-upgrader code for the basic functinality of updating the sources.list, doing the dist-ugprade and catching errors via a non-interactive frontend.

Implementation

Code

Code was written for the breezy->dapper testing in the http://people.ubuntu.com/~mvo/bzr/update-manager/non-interactive/ branch. This can be used as a basis for the automatic testing.

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

Proper use of Xen and LVM might make this quite straightforward to administer. -iwj

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