diff mbox series

selftests: Skip BPF seftests by default

Message ID 20201210185233.28091-1-broonie@kernel.org
State New
Headers show
Series selftests: Skip BPF seftests by default | expand

Commit Message

Mark Brown Dec. 10, 2020, 6:52 p.m. UTC
The BPF selftests have build time dependencies on cutting edge versions
of tools in the BPF ecosystem including LLVM which are more involved
to satisfy than more typical requirements like installing a package from
your distribution.  This causes issues for users looking at kselftest in
as a whole who find that a default build of kselftest fails and that
resolving this is time consuming and adds administrative overhead.  The
fast pace of BPF development and the need for a full BPF stack to do
substantial development or validation work on the code mean that people
working directly on it don't see a reasonable way to keep supporting
older environments without causing problems with the usability of the
BPF tests in BPF development so these requirements are unlikely to be
relaxed in the immediate future.

There is already support for skipping targets so in order to reduce the
barrier to entry for people interested in kselftest as a whole let's use
that to skip the BPF tests by default when people work with the top
level kselftest build system.  Users can still build the BPF selftests
as part of the wider kselftest build by specifying SKIP_TARGETS,
including setting an empty SKIP_TARGETS to build everything.  They can
also continue to build the BPF selftests individually in cases where
they are specifically focused on BPF.

This isn't ideal since it means people will need to take special steps
to build the BPF tests but the dependencies mean that realistically this
is already the case to some extent and it makes it easier for people to
pick up and work with the other selftests which is hopefully a net win.

Signed-off-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
---
 tools/testing/selftests/Makefile | 6 ++++--
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

Comments

Mark Brown Dec. 17, 2020, 1:07 p.m. UTC | #1
On Wed, Dec 16, 2020 at 04:05:58PM -0600, Seth Forshee wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 06:52:33PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote:

> > as part of the wider kselftest build by specifying SKIP_TARGETS,
> > including setting an empty SKIP_TARGETS to build everything.  They can
> > also continue to build the BPF selftests individually in cases where
> > they are specifically focused on BPF.

> Why not just remove the line which adds bpf to TARGETS? This has the
> same effect, but doesn't require an emtpy SKIP_TARGETS to run them. We
> have testing scripts which use 'make TARGETS=bpf ...' which will have to
> be updated, and I doubt we are the only ones.

> I also feel like this creates confusing semantics around SKIP_TARGETS.
> If I don't supply a value then I don't get the bpf selftests, but then
> if I try to use SKIP_TARGETS to skip some other test suddenly I do get
> them. That's counterintuitive.

That's what I did first, it's also messy just differently.  If you
don't add bpf to TARGETS then if you do what's needed to get it building
it becomes inconvenient to run it as part of running everything else at
the top level since you need to enumerate all the targets.  It felt like
skipping is what we're actually doing here and it seems like those
actively working with BPF will be used to having to update things in
their environment.  People who start using SKIP_TARGETS are *probably*
going to find out about it from the Makefile anyway so will see the
default that's there.

Fundamentally having such demanding build dependencies is always going
to result in some kind of mess, it's just where we push it.

> I also wanted to point out that the net/test_bpf.sh selftest requires
> having the test_bpf module from the bpf selftest build. So when the bpf
> selftests aren't built this test is guaranteed to fail. Though it would
> be nice if the net selftests didn't require building the bpf self tests
> in order to pass.

Right, that's a separate issue - the net tests should really skip that
if they don't have BPF, as we do for other runtime detectable
dependencies.  It's nowhere near as severe as failing to build though.
Shuah Khan Dec. 17, 2020, 3:53 p.m. UTC | #2
On 12/17/20 6:07 AM, Mark Brown wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 16, 2020 at 04:05:58PM -0600, Seth Forshee wrote:

>> On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 06:52:33PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote:

> 

>>> as part of the wider kselftest build by specifying SKIP_TARGETS,

>>> including setting an empty SKIP_TARGETS to build everything.  They can

>>> also continue to build the BPF selftests individually in cases where

>>> they are specifically focused on BPF.

> 

>> Why not just remove the line which adds bpf to TARGETS? This has the

>> same effect, but doesn't require an emtpy SKIP_TARGETS to run them. We

>> have testing scripts which use 'make TARGETS=bpf ...' which will have to

>> be updated, and I doubt we are the only ones.

> 


I would prefer leaving bpf in the main Makefile TARGETS. This will be
useful to users that have their systems setup for bpf builds.

>> I also feel like this creates confusing semantics around SKIP_TARGETS.

>> If I don't supply a value then I don't get the bpf selftests, but then

>> if I try to use SKIP_TARGETS to skip some other test suddenly I do get

>> them. That's counterintuitive.

> 

> That's what I did first, it's also messy just differently.  If you

> don't add bpf to TARGETS then if you do what's needed to get it building

> it becomes inconvenient to run it as part of running everything else at

> the top level since you need to enumerate all the targets.  It felt like

> skipping is what we're actually doing here and it seems like those

> actively working with BPF will be used to having to update things in

> their environment.  People who start using SKIP_TARGETS are *probably*

> going to find out about it from the Makefile anyway so will see the

> default that's there.

> 

> Fundamentally having such demanding build dependencies is always going

> to result in some kind of mess, it's just where we push it.

> 

>> I also wanted to point out that the net/test_bpf.sh selftest requires

>> having the test_bpf module from the bpf selftest build. So when the bpf

>> selftests aren't built this test is guaranteed to fail. Though it would

>> be nice if the net selftests didn't require building the bpf self tests

>> in order to pass.

> 

> Right, that's a separate issue - the net tests should really skip that

> if they don't have BPF, as we do for other runtime detectable

> dependencies.  It's nowhere near as severe as failing to build though.

> 


Correct. This has to be handled as a run-time dependency check and skip
instead of fail.

thanks,
-- Shuah
Shuah Khan Dec. 17, 2020, 6:32 p.m. UTC | #3
On 12/17/20 8:53 AM, Shuah Khan wrote:
> On 12/17/20 6:07 AM, Mark Brown wrote:

>> On Wed, Dec 16, 2020 at 04:05:58PM -0600, Seth Forshee wrote:

>>> On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 06:52:33PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote:

>>

>>>> as part of the wider kselftest build by specifying SKIP_TARGETS,

>>>> including setting an empty SKIP_TARGETS to build everything.  They can

>>>> also continue to build the BPF selftests individually in cases where

>>>> they are specifically focused on BPF.

>>


Applied to linuxkselftest fixes for rc2

thanks,
-- Shuah
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/tools/testing/selftests/Makefile b/tools/testing/selftests/Makefile
index afbab4aeef3c..8a917cb4426a 100644
--- a/tools/testing/selftests/Makefile
+++ b/tools/testing/selftests/Makefile
@@ -77,8 +77,10 @@  TARGETS += zram
 TARGETS_HOTPLUG = cpu-hotplug
 TARGETS_HOTPLUG += memory-hotplug
 
-# User can optionally provide a TARGETS skiplist.
-SKIP_TARGETS ?=
+# User can optionally provide a TARGETS skiplist.  By default we skip
+# BPF since it has cutting edge build time dependencies which require
+# more effort to install.
+SKIP_TARGETS ?= bpf
 ifneq ($(SKIP_TARGETS),)
 	TMP := $(filter-out $(SKIP_TARGETS), $(TARGETS))
 	override TARGETS := $(TMP)