Table of Contents
The previous chapter introduced the concepts underlying QMTest's design. These were demonstrated with particular types of tests, resources, databases, etc. . These types are designed to be extensible, i.e. QMTest can operate with arbitrary instances of these types. In fact, QMTest provides a large number of such extensions.
This chapter discusses how to use them, i.e. how to find out what extensions are available, and how to use them to construct custom test databases.
In the previous chapter we have created a test database containing a number of tests. These tests were instances of test types, such as python.ExecTest. When creating a test, a user chooses a test type, and assigns test-specific parameters to it.
The same extension mechanism is used for other aspects of QMTest's functionality. All these types are extensions, which provide a generic interface for QMTest to query.
To find out what extensions are available, use qmtest extensions. To list all available test types, use:
>qmtest extensions -k test** Available test classes ** - command.ExecTest Check a program's output and exit code. - command.ShellCommandTest Check a shell command's output and exit code. - python.ExecTest Check that a Python expression evaluates to true. ...
To find out more about a particular extension type, use the describe command:
>qmtest describe test command.ExecTestclass name: python.ExecTest Check that a Python expression evaluates to true. class attributes: prerequisites The tests on which this test depends. source The source code. target_group The targets on which this test can run. expression The expression to evaluate. resources Resources on which this test or resource depends.
To create a test of that type, you can call:
> qmtest create --id=my_test -a expression='True' test python.ExecTest
where the extension parameters are specified with the -a option.
QMTest searches for extensions in particular places, in the following order:
in the paths contained in the QMTEST_CLASS_PATH
environment variable.
in the class-path associated with a particular test database
(typically the QMTest/ subdirectory).
in the site-extension path associated with a particular QMTest installation.
in the set of built-in extensions that come with a particular QMTest installation.
This search allows users to provide their own extension types. See Chapter 4, Extending QMTest for a detailed discussion of how to create new extensions.
The rest of this chapter will discuss the various extension kinds that can be used to customize QMTest.