[Pdx-pm] ... and "what's next?"

[Bryce Harrington]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 06:23:16PM -0700, Eric Wilhelm wrote:
> Yeah, me again,
> 
> So, who wants to give a presentation this month?  Will it be you, you, 
> or ... you?
> 
> If you're not sure whether you can pull off a presentation, try me.  
> I'll help you work on the material, whatever.
> 
> If you thought "I could give a presentation on ___, but nah, that 
> wouldn't be cool enough.", try me.

Well, I have something that definitely fits in this particular blank.
At OSDL we've been doing some coding for automated testing.  Several
pieces are in perl and have been uploaded to CPAN, including one set of
modules for editing/updating different kinds of bootloader config files,
called Linux::Bootloader, another module WWW::PkgFind for downloading
software packages from web or ftp sites, or from cvs/git/svn, and
another set of modules for parsing test output from different kinds of
test programs, called Test::Parser.  We've also recently added a module, 
Test::Presenter, that employs an XML database to recombobulate parsed
test data into forms that Chart::Graph::Gnuplot and similar modules can
use for making pretty SVG graphs.

Crucible is a test harness that utilizes all of these different pieces,
along with a mess of bash scripts, to provide a generalized automated
testing system.  We use Crucible for testing NFSv4, Linux CPU and Memory
hotplug, Inkscape, Cairo, and GeGL.  It coordinates tests across a
collection of different machines of different architectures; it handles
automated power cycling to test-boot new kernels; it can reimage,
capture console logs, etc.; it can coordinate multi-client/server
configurations; it slices; it dices; it'll even CUT THROUGH A TIN CAN!1!!

Anyway, I know in general testing is a pretty ho-hum topic, but Crucible
has been proving itself quite handy, and I'd like to show it off a bit.
Plus, I bet the associated modules could potentially be useful for
things beyond automated testing.  (And it'd be nice presenting it to an
audience that isn't rabidly anti-Perl!)  If nothing else, I could give
folks a really good nap...

Or, I could do a demo of Inkscape.  It has nothing to do with Perl but
it's oh so pretty to demo...

Bryce