[U-Boot] test/py: support running sandbox under gdbserver

[Stephen Warren]

On 02/08/2016 01:49 PM, Tom Rini wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 04, 2016 at 04:11:50PM -0700, Stephen Warren wrote:
>
>> From: Stephen Warren <swarren at nvidia.com>
>>
>> Implement command--line option --gdbserver COMM, which does two things:
>>
>> a) Run the sandbox process under gdbserver, using COMM as gdbserver's
>>     communication channel.
>>
>> b) Disables all timeouts, so that if U-Boot is halted under the debugger,
>>     tests don't fail. If the user gives up in the middle of a debugging
>>     session, they can simply CTRL-C the test script to abort it.
>>
>> This allows easy debugging of test failures without having to manually
>> re-create the failure conditions. Usage is:
>>
>> Window 1:
>> ./test/py/test.py --bd sandbox --gdbserver localhost:1234
>>
>> Window 2:
>> gdb ./build-sandbox/u-boot -ex 'target remote localhost:1234'
>>
>> When using this option, it likely makes sense to use pytest's -k option
>> to limit the set of tests that are executed.
>>
>> Simply running U-Boot directly under gdb (rather than gdbserver) was
>> also considered. However, this was rejected because:
>>
>> a) gdb's output would then be processed by the test script, and likely
>>     confuse it causing false failures.
>>
>> b) pytest by default hides stdout from tests, which would prevent the
>>     user from interacting with gdb.
>>
>>     While gdb can be told to redirect the debugee's stdio to a separate
>>     PTY, this would appear to leave gdb's stdio directed at the test
>>     scripts and the debugee's stdio directed elsewhere, which is the
>>     opposite of the desired effect. Perhaps some complicated PTY muxing
>>     and process hierarchy could invert this. However, the current scheme
>>     is simple to implement and use, so it doesn't seem worth complicating
>>     matters.
>>
>> c) Using gdbserver allows arbitrary debuggers to be used, even those with
>>     a GUI. If the test scripts invoked the debugger themselves, they'd have
>>     to know how to execute arbitary applications. While the user could hide
>>     this all in a wrapper script, this feels like extra complication.
>>
>> An interesting future idea might be a --gdb-screen option, which could
>> spawn both U-Boot and gdb separately, and spawn the screen into a newly
>> created window under screen. Similar options could be envisaged for
>> creating a new xterm/... too.
>>
>> --gdbserver  currently only supports sandbox, and not real hardware.
>> That's primarily because the test hooks are responsible for all aspects of
>> hardware control, so there's nothing for the test scripts themselves can
>> do to enable gdbserver on real hardware. We might consider introducing a
>> separate --disable-timeouts option to support use of debuggers on real
>> hardware, and having --gdbserver imply that option.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Stephen Warren <swarren at nvidia.com>
>
> Applied to u-boot/master, thanks!

Oh. I was just about to send V2 to address some of Simon's comments...