netdev - Re: [RFC 0/7] selftests: kselftest_harness: use common result printing helper

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Message-ID: <202402161328.02EE71595A@keescook>
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2024 13:32:12 -0800
From: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
To: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
Cc: jakub@...udflare.com, shuah@...nel.org, linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org,
	netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC 0/7] selftests: kselftest_harness: use common result
 printing helper

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 04:41:15PM -0800, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> First 3 patches rearrange kselftest_harness to use exit code
> as an enum rather than separate passed/skip/xfail members.

One thought I was having here while porting other stuff to use XFAIL was
that in the strictest sense, XFAIL isn't like SKIP, which can be used to
avoid running a test entirely. XFAIL is about the expected outcome,
which means that if we're going to support XFAIL correctly, we need to
distinguish when a test was marked XFAIL but it _didn't_ fail.

The implicit expectation is that a test outcome should be "pass". If
something is marked "xfail", we're saying a successful test is that it
fails. If it _passes_ instead of failing, this is unexpected and should
be reported as well. (i.e. an XPASS -- unexpected pass)

I think if we mix intent with result code, we're going to lose the
ability to make this distinction in the future. (Right now the harness
doesn't do it either -- it treats XFAIL as a special SKIP.)

-- 
Kees Cook