[tbot] Testcase / Scripting JTAG Debugger

[Wolfgang Denk]

Hallo Harald,

In message <4c44dbd1e71be5555964e5e9a5c9fdd480590569.camel at denx.de> you wrote:
>
> > - maybe even provide a generic way to "open a connection" to some
> >   other device and run interactive commands on it.  This could abso
> >   be (for example) a SSH connection to some other board which serves
> >   as a test partner, say when running CAN or TCP/IP tests between
> >   two boards.
>
> SSH connections are already possible[1], they are used for example for the
> build-host.

Hm... it's a pity that SSH is special.  Can we not abstract fro the
actual communcation media and protocol?  I mean, "ssh foo", "rlogin
bar", "telnet baz nnn" or "cu system" more or less all do the same
thing: setting up a communication channel.

I would find it really nice if we would leave the decision which
tools [cu, kermit, minicom, ...] / media [serial, TCP/IP, CAN, ...]
/ protocols one wants to use to the end user, without needing to add
specific code for each of these.

Is this possible?

> > I think is should be possible to have several such "connections"
> > open in a test case - console and BDI are just two examples of what
> > we frequently need.
>
> Yes, you can have as many connections as you want! (Actually, at the moment it
> is limited by the number of channels configured for your sshd but if that ever
> gets to be a problem, I could implement opening secondary sessions ...)

Well, the BDI connection would use "telnet" protocol so I don;t
think this is related to the sshd configuration?

> In tbot's design this looks a little different, but essentially this
> is what is planned.  At the moment I only have Linux and U-Boot, as
> soon as we add gdbserver, BDIs, etc, I need to refactor that code a
> little, but that's not a big deal ...

This is what I mean: I don;t want to add gdbserver or BDI support.
I just want to have the ability to connect myself to such tools.
Actually I have no idea what else one might want to use - but I can
come up with a pretty long lsit - more tools / types of coneections
you ever want to implement as special cases :-)

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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