Proposal: jtreg tests with native components

[Martin Buchholz]

I don't see a good solution.  Conceptually, the tests are built/executed
independently of the jdk they are testing.  But it would be crazy to have a
separate configure/make infrastructure for each native test.  If you build
the test native bits together with the jdk, you would have to be careful
not to copy those bits into "real" deployed jdks.

Here's an idea: you can ask a jdk how it was configured/built and reuse
that to build tests.  There's prior art, e.g. emacs remembers how it was
configured (but that's not enough to let you build compatible test
binaries).

system-configuration-options is a variable defined in `C source code'.
Its value is
" '--build' 'x86_64-linux-gnu' '--build' 'x86_64-linux-gnu' '--prefix=/usr'
'--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib'
'--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--infodir=/usr/share/info'
'--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes'
'--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs23:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim'
'--with-crt-dir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu' '--with-x=yes'
'--with-x-toolkit=gtk' '--with-toolkit-scroll-bars'
'build_alias=x86_64-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-g'
'CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2'"

Documentation:
String containing the configuration options Emacs was built with.



On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 8:31 AM, Jonathan Gibbons <
jonathan.gibbons at oracle.com> wrote:

> I'll quibble over the phrase "the same makefile logic".
>
> I think it is OK to use the same Makefile infrastructure (e.g. the
> configure.sh mechanism) and the same top level Makefile, but at some level
> this is going to need to be distinct Makefile logic specific to compiling
> the code for the tests.
>
> I agree with the general concept of pre-building binaries, but it would be
> good to see the next level of detail:
>
> -- where is the source code for the native code of the tests
> -- is it one library per test, or what
> -- what sort of hierarchy do the libraries end up in.
>
> I am also concerned for the developer experience.  One of the
> characteristics of the jtreg design has always been that it is
> dev-friendly, meaning it is easy and fast for developers to edit a test and
> rerun it.    For myself, I don't work on native code, or on repos
> containing native code, so I'd be interested to hear how this will impact
> developers working on tests, and on those folk that simply want to run the
> tests.
>
> -- Jon
>
>
>
> On 04/25/2014 05:02 AM, Staffan Larsen wrote:
>
>> There are a couple of jtreg tests today that depend on native components
>> (either JNI libraries or executables). These are handled in one of two ways:
>>
>> 1) The binaries are pre-compiled and checked into the repository (often
>> inside jar files).
>> 2) The test will try to invoke a compiler (gcc, cl, …) when the test is
>> being run.
>>
>> Neither of these are very good solutions. #1 makes it hard to run the
>> setup the test for all platforms and requires binaries in the source
>> control system. #2 is hit-and-miss: the correct compiler may or may not be
>> installed on the test machine, and the approach requires platform specific
>> logic to be maintained.
>>
>> I would like to propose that these native components are instead compiled
>> when the product is built by the same makefile logic as the product. At
>> product build time we know we have access to the (correct) compilers and we
>> have excellent support in the makefiles for building on all platforms.
>>
>> If we build the native test components together with the product, we also
>> have to take care of distributing the result together with the product when
>> we do testing across a larger number of machines. We will also need a way
>> to tell the jtreg tests where these pre-built binaries are located.
>>
>> I suggest that at the end of a distributed build run, the pre-built test
>> binaries are packaged in a zip or tar file (just like the product bits) and
>> stored next to the product bundles. When we run distributed tests, we need
>> to pick up the product bundle and the test bundle before the testing is
>> started.
>>
>> To tell the tests where the native code is, I would like to add a flag to
>> jtreg to point out the path to the binaries. This should cause jtreg to set
>> java.library.path before invoking a test and also set a test.* property
>> which can be used by test to find it’s native components.
>>
>> This kind of setup would make it easier to add and maintain tests that
>> have a native component. I think this will be especially important as more
>> tests are written using jtreg in the hotspot repository.
>>
>> Thoughts on this? Is the general approach ok? There are lots of details
>> to be figured out, but at this stage I would like to hear feedback on the
>> idea as such.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> /Staffan
>>
>>
>