1INTRO
2-----
3This directory (nightly/) contains a simple, automatic build-and-test
4system for Valgrind, intended to be run nightly by cron or a similar
5program.
6
7
8BASIC OPERATIONS
9----------------
10When run, the system checks out two trees: the SVN trunk from 24 hours ago
11and the SVN trunk from now. ("24 hours ago" and "now" are determined when
12the script starts running, so if any commits happen while the tests are
13running they will not be tested.)
14
15If the two trees are different (i.e. there have been commits in the past 24
16hours, either to the trunk or a branch) it builds ("make"), installs ("make
17install") and runs the regression tests ("make regtest") in both, and
18compares the results. Note that the "make install" isn't necessary in order
19to run the tests because the regression tests use the code built (with
20"make") within the tree, but it's worth doing because it tests that "make
21install" isn't totally broken. After checking both trees, it emails a
22summary of the results to a recipient. All this typically takes something
23like 30 minutes.
24
25If the two trees are identical, the tests are not run and no results are
26emailed. This avoids spamming people with uninteresting results emails when
27no commits have happened recently.
28
29
30SETTING UP
31----------
32To set up nightly testing for a machine, do the following.
33
34(1) Check out just this directory from the repository, eg:
35
36 svn co svn://svn.valgrind.org/valgrind/trunk/nightly $DIR
37
38 where $DIR is the name of the directory you want it to be in.
39
40 Note that this doesn't check out the whole Valgrind tree, just the
41 directory containing the nightly testing stuff. This is possible
42 because the testing script doesn't check the code in the tree it belongs
43 to; rather it checks out new trees (within $DIR) and tests them
44 independently.
45
46(2) Choose a tag that identifies the test results. This is usually the
47 machine name. We'll call it $TAG in what follows.
48
49(3) Create a configuration file $DIR/conf/$TAG.conf. It is sourced by the
50 'nightly' script, and can define any or all of the following environment
51 variables. (In most cases, only ABT_DETAILS is needed.)
52
53 - ABT_DETAILS: describes the machine in more detail, eg. the OS. The
54 default is empty, but you should define it. An example:
55
56 export ABT_DETAILS="Ubuntu 9.04, Intel x86-64"
57
58 You could also use some invocation of 'uname' or something similar
59 to generate this string. Eg. on Ubuntu Linux this works nicely:
60
61 export ABT_DETAILS="`cat /etc/issue.net`, `uname -m`"
62
63 And on Mac OS X this works nicely:
64
65 export ABT_DETAILS=`uname -mrs`
66
67 The advantage of doing it like this is that if you update the OS on
68 the test machine you won't have to update ABT_DETAILS manually.
69
70 - ABT_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS: gives extra configure options. The default is
71 empty.
72
73 - ABT_EVAL: if provided, it must be the name of a shell script that
74 executes the shell command $1 with arguments $2 .. ${$#}. Allows to
75 compile and run the Valgrind regression tests on another system than
76 the system the 'nightly' script runs on. It is assumed that the remote
77 system shares the local filesystem tree through e.g. NFS. It is the
78 responsibility of the shell script to set the remote working directory
79 such that it matches the local current directory ($PWD).
80
81 - ABT_RUN_REGTEST: if provided, it must be the name of an argumentless
82 shell function (also specified in the $TAG.conf file) that will be used
83 to run the tests. If not specified, the usual "make regtest" will be
84 used.
85
86 - ABT_JOBS: allows parallel builds -- it's passed as the argument to
87 "make -j" when building Valgrind and the tests. The default is 1.
88
89 - ABT_PERF: unset or set to "" mean 'do not run perf tests' (default value)
90 set to "--vg=../valgrind-new" (run perf tests for new tree)
91 set to "--vg=../valgrind-new --vg=../valgrind-old"
92 (run perf tests for "new" and for "24 hours ago",
93 to compare the performances between the 2 trees).
94
95 - ABT_PERF_TOOLS: --tools=.... option of perf/vg_perf.
96 (default value: all non experimental tools)
97
98 - ABT_PERF_REPS: --reps=... option of perf/vg_perf
99 (default value: --reps=3)
100
101 Note that the appropriate syntax to use in this file will depend on the
102 shell from which the $DIR/bin/nightly script is run (which in turn may
103 depend on what shell is used by cron or any similar program).
104
105(4) Create a mailer script $DIR/conf/$TAG.sendmail. It must be executable.
106 It's used to send email results to the desired recipient (e.g.
107 valgrind-developers@lists.sourceforge.net) It must handle three command
108 line arguments.
109
110 - The first argument is the email subject line. It contains
111 $ABT_DETAILS plus some other stuff.
112
113 - The second argument is the name of the file containing the email's
114 body (which shows the tests that failed, and the differences between now
115 and 24 hours ago).
116
117 - The third is the name of the file containing all the diffs from
118 failing tests. Depending on the test results you get, you could
119 inline this file into the email body, or attach it, or compress and
120 attach it, or even omit it. The right choice depends on how many
121 failures you typically get -- if you get few failures, inlining the
122 results make them easier to read; if you get many failures,
123 compressing might be a good idea to minimise the size of the emails.
124
125 The best way to do this depends on how mail is set up on your machine.
126 You might be able to use /usr/bin/mail, or you might need something more
127 elaborate like using Mutt to send mail via an external account.
128
129 At first, you should probably just send emails to yourself for testing
130 purposes. After it's working, then sending it to others might be
131 appropriate.
132
133(5) To run the tests, execute:
134
135 $DIR/bin/nightly $DIR $TAG
136
137 You probably want to put this command into a cron file or equivalent
138 so it is run regularly (preferably every night). Actually, it's
139 probably better to put that command inside a script, and run the script
140 from cron, rather than running $DIR/bin/nightly directly. That way you
141 can put any other configuration stuff that's necessary inside the
142 script (e.g. make sure that programs used by the mailer script are in
143 your PATH).
144
145
146OUTPUT FILES
147------------
148If the tests are run, the following files are produced:
149
150- $DIR/old.verbose and $DIR/new.verbose contain full output of the whole
151 process for each of the two trees.
152
153- $DIR/old.short and $DIR/new.short contain summary output of the process
154 for each of the two trees. The diff between these two files goes in
155 $DIR/diff.short.
156
157- $DIR/final contains the overall summary, constructed from $DIR/old.short,
158 $DIR/new.short, $DIR/diff.short and some other bits and pieces. (The name
159 of this file is what's passed as the second argument to
160 $DIR/conf/$TAG.sendmail.)
161
162- $DIR/diffs holds the diffs from all the failing tests in the newer tree,
163 concatenated together; the diff from each failure is truncated at 100
164 lines to minimise possible size blow-outs. (The name of this file is
165 what's passed as the third argument to $DIR/conf/$TAG.sendmail.)
166
167- $DIR/sendmail.log contains the output (stdout and stderr) from
168 $DIR/conf/$TAG.sendmail goes in $DIR/sendmail.log.
169
170- $DIR/valgrind-old/ and $DIR/valgrind-new/ contain the tested trees (and
171 $DIR/valgrind-old/Inst/ and $DIR/valgrind-new/Inst/ contain the installed
172 code).
173
174If the tests aren't run, the following file is produced:
175
176- $DIR/unchanged.log is created only if no tests were run because the two
177 trees were identical. It will contain a short explanatory message.
178
179Each time the tests are run, all files from previous runs are deleted.
180
181
182TROUBLESHOOTING
183---------------
184If something goes wrong, looking at the output files can be useful. For
185example, if no email was sent but you expected one, check sendmail.log to
186see if the mailer script had a problem. Or check if unchanged.log exists.
187
188Occasionally the SVN server isn't available when the tests runs, for either
189or both trees. When this happens the email will be sent but it won't be
190very informative. Usually it's just a temporary server problem and it'll
191run fine the next time without you having to do anything.
192
193Note that the test suite is imperfect:
194- There are very few machines where all tests pass; that's why the old/new
195 diff is produced. Some of the tests may not be as portable as intended.
196- Some tests are non-deterministic, and so may pass one day and fail the
197 next.
198
199Improving the test suite to avoid these problems is a long-term goal but it
200isn't easy.
201
202
203MAINTENANCE
204-----------
205The scripts in the nightly/ directory occasionally get updated. If that
206happens, you can just "svn update" within $DIR to get the updated versions,
207which will then be used the next time the tests run. (It's possible that
208the scripts will be changed in a way that requires changes to the files in
209$DIR/conf/, but we try to avoid this.)
210
211If you want such updates to happen automatically, you could write a script
212that does all the steps in SETTING UP above, and instead run that script
213from cron.
214
215
216