Testing for kernel performance regressions [LWN.net]

Testing for kernel performance regressions

Posted Aug 4, 2012 23:44 UTC (Sat) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
In reply to: Testing for kernel performance regressions by drdabbles
Parent article: Testing for kernel performance regressions

Don't pick one test suite, pick all of them!

to post comments

Testing for kernel performance regressions

Posted Aug 4, 2012 23:54 UTC (Sat) by drdabbles (guest, #48755) [Link] (1 responses)

At some point, doing that becomes a maintainability nightmare and an impractical approach. Less time should be spent on setting up the test environment than running the tests.

Having to install 2, 3, or 4 test suite packages just to run the tests means nobody will ever actually run them.

Perhaps a solution like GIT- built specifically for the Linux kernel use case, could be helpful.

Testing for kernel performance regressions

Posted Aug 5, 2012 2:56 UTC (Sun) by shemminger (subscriber, #5739) [Link]

OSDL tried this, and trust me it failed. The problem is that lots of hardware is expensive to maintain and most tests give no meaningful result. They invested at a least 10 person/years of effort in getting a working test infrastructure and running tests, and the result was only a few bugs that were worth the attention of kernel developers.

Random testing is often better than organized testing! Organized testing works for benchmarks, but the developer in tawain who boots on a new box and reports that the wireless doesn't work is priceless.