Cockpit unit test container

This container has all build dependencies and toolchains (GCC and clang) that we want to exercise Cockpit with, mostly for make distcheck and make check-memory. This container runs on GitHub, but can be easily run locally too.

It assumes that the Cockpit source git checkout is available in /source. It will not modify that directory or take uncommitted changes into account, but it will re-use an already existing node_modules/ directory.

The scripts can use either podman (preferred) or docker. If you use docker, you need to run all commands as root. With podman the containers work as either user or root.

Building

The build script will build the cockpit/unit-tests and cockpit/unit-tests:i386 containers. Call it with an architecture to only build one variant, e.g. build i386.

Running tests

You need to disable SELinux with sudo setenforce 0 for this. There is no other way for the container to access the files in your build tree (do not use the --volume :Z option, as that will destroy the file labels on the host).

Tests in that container get started with the start script. By default, this script runs the unit tests on amd64. The script accepts a number of arguments to modify its behaviour:

• --env CC=othercc to set the CC environment variable inside the container (ie: to build with a different compiler)
• --image-tag to specify a different tag to use for the cockpit/unit-tests image (eg: --image-tag=i386)

Additionally, a testing scenario can be provided with specifying a make target. Supported scenarios are:

• check-memory: runs 'make check-memory' (ie: run the unit tests under valgrind)
• distcheck: runs 'make distcheck' and some related checks
• pycheck: runs browser unit tests against the Python bridge

Some examples:

$ ./start --make check-memory                 # run the valgrind tests on amd64

$ ./start --env=CC=clang --make check-memory  # run the valgrind tests, compiled with clang

$ ./start --image-tag=i386 distcheck          # run the distcheck tests on i386

Debugging tests

For interactive debugging, run a shell in the container:

$ ./start

You will find the cockpit source tree (from the host) mounted at /source in the container. Run

$ /source/autogen.sh

to create a build tree, then you can run any make or other debugging command interactively.

You can also attach to another container using the provided exec script. For example:

$ ./exec uname -a   # run a command as the "builder" user

$ ./exec --root     # start a shell as root

More Info

• Cockpit Project
• Cockpit Development