Oh, hang on, are you developing on Windows? If so, it's not supported
in 2.2.0.
Peter Firmstone wrote:
Greg,
You need to spend some more time figuring out why those tests are
failing, that isn't normal, when 280 tests fail, there's usually
something wrong with configuration. The qa test suite just isn't that
brittle ;) The tests that fail due to concurrency errors don't fail
often, we're talking 3/10 you might get a failure (if you're lucky)
and likely, you won't see any failures on single core hardware. The
Jenkins tests tend to be more likely to fail because they run
concurrent with other builds, in a busy network environment (sockets
in use etc), with lots of superfluous discovery processes going in the
background.
If you need some help with the source tree, I'm quite familiar with
it, don't be afraid to ask questions.
This is a big distribution, there is a lot of code, it is initially
difficult to find your way around, but patience will be rewarded.
There are 3 test suites:
1. trunk/test
2. trunk/qa/src
3. trunk/qa/jtreg
The first is the junit test suite, the second is the qa integration
test suite and tck, which simulates a network environment with all the
services, the last is the jtreg regression test suite.
When you've done further investigation and better understand the code,
then we'll be in a better position for discussion, right now the
immediate focus should be on a 2.2.1 release.
I'll switch to your branch and run the tests if you like.
I'd also like to encourage you to look at the code in
skunk/qa-refactoring, it's well documented and should be easy to read,
I've followed Kent Beck's recommendations for code readability.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Peter.
Greg Trasuk wrote:
OK, so in my last message I talked about how (speaking only for
myself) I'm a little nervous about the state of the trunk.
So what now?
Problems we need to avoid in this discussion:
-------------------------------------------------------------
- Conflation of source tree structure issues with build tool selection.
- Conflation of Maven build, Maven as codebase provider (artifact
urls), and posting artifacts to Maven Central
- Wish lists of pet features
- Bruised egos and personal criticisms.
Issues I see, in no particular order:
----------------------------------------------
- We've done changes both to the test framework and the code, and
lots of them. We should do one or the other, or small amounts of
coevolution, if absolutely necessary.
- Really, I'd like to see a completely separate integration test, and
have the TCK tests separated out again.
- The source tree is incomprehensible
- The tests appear to be awfully sensitive to their environment.
Insofar as when I run them locally on an untouched source tree, I get
280 failures.
- There have been changes to class loading and security subsystems.
These subsystems are core to Jini, and the changes were made to the
existing source, so there's no way to "opt-out" of the changes. I'd
like to see radical changes be optional until proven in the field,
where possible. In the case of policy providers and class loaders,
that should be easy to do.
- Similarly, it seems there have been some changes to the JERI
framework.
- There are ".jar" files in our repository. I'll stipulate that the
licensing has been checked, but it smells bad.
Discussion
-----------------
I guess the biggest thing I'd like to see is stability in the test
framework. Perhaps it needs refactoring or reorganization, but if
so, we need to be very careful to separate it from changes to the
core functionality.
Next, I'd like for it to be easier to comprehend the source tree. I
think a good way to do that is to separate out (carefully) the core
Jini package (basically the contents of jsk-platform.jar) and the
service implementations. There's no reason that we have to have one
huge everything-but-the-kitchen-sink distribution. That's just a
holdover from how Sun structured the JTSK - It was literally a
"starter kit". To me it would be fine to have separate deliverables
for the platform and the services.
While we're separating out the services, it might also be a decent
time to implement Maven-based builds if we think that's a good idea.
I'd start with Reggie. It would also be a good time to get rid of
the "com.sun.jini" packages.
Aside: I'm personally ambivalent on Maven (which is to say I'm
nowhere near as negative on it as I once was). I do agree with
Dennis, though, that the jars and appropriate poms need to be
published to Maven Central. There's no doubt that users will
appreciate that.
Once we have a stable set of regression tests, then OK, we could
think about improving performance or using Maven repositories as the
codebase server.
I realize this won't be popular, but my gut feel is that we need to
step back to the 2.2 branch and retrace our steps a little, and go
through the evolution again in a more measured fashion.
Proposal
------------
1 - Release version 2.2.1 from the 2.2 branch.
2 - Create a separate source tree for the test framework. This could
come from the "qa_refactor" branch, but the goal should be to
successfully test the 2.2.1 release. Plus it should be a no-brainer
to pull it down and run it on a local machine.
3 - Release 2.2.2 from the pruned jtsk tree. Release 1.0.0 of the
test framework.
4 - Pull out the infrastructure service implementations (Reggie,
Outrigger, Norm, etc) from the core into separate products. Release
1.0.0 on each of them. Release 2.2.3 from the pruned jtsk tree.
5 - Adopt a fixed release cycle. Not sure if it should be quarterly
or biennial, or whether it should be all products at once or
staggered releases. We'll need to discuss.
6 - Then we can start making changes if necessary to the individual
products. And also try to deal with making it easier for new users
to use the technology.
So there you go. Opinions?
Greg Trasuk.
