linux-kernel - Re: No care given to GDB scripts..

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Message-ID: <25a5e810-1e57-4a59-ae82-cb2c7d28a116@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed, 29 Nov 2023 16:23:55 -0800
From:   Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@...il.com>
To:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@...mens.com>,
        Kieran Bingham <kbingham@...nel.org>,
        Shanker Donthineni <sdonthineni@...dia.com>,
        Kuan-Ying Lee <Kuan-Ying.Lee@...iatek.com>,
        AngeloGioacchino Del Regno 
        <angelogioacchino.delregno@...labora.com>
Subject: Re: No care given to GDB scripts..

On 11/29/23 15:06, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2023 14:48:02 -0800 Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@...il.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> It is quite clear that there are zero cares being given to making sure
>> that GDB scripts continue to work after making changes to core kernel
>> code, and why would you, because you probably did not know those
>> existed, but they do and they are used, and useful.
>>
>> A recent example that was fixed by Kuan-Ying is this:
>>
>> and now of course, "lx-interupts" also stopped working altogether after
>> this change:
>>
>> https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230519134902.1495562-4-sdonthineni@nvidia.com
>>
>> and who knows what else I could not test that is also broken.
>>
>> We really need to find a better way to stop breaking GDB scripts, they
>> break way too often to be even remotely usable, and this is really sad.
>>
>> It is also quite clear that we do not have enough continuous integration
>> and regression testing to ensure those breakages are caught ahead of time...
>>
> 
> This isn't terribly surprising - the gdb scripts are a pretty remote
> corner and are peculiarly sensitive to getting damaged by routine
> kernel development.
> 
> Is there any way of scripting the scripts so we can have some sort of
> automated testing down under tools/testing/selftests/?

That might be a bit difficult to do as this would mean that we can self 
debug and introspect using gdb the live kernel. Testing using QEMU is 
definitively doable however. Of course, I just found another script that 
broke (device.py)!
-- 
Florian