[ovs-discuss] Testing OVS

[Ben Pfaff]

On Tue, Oct 08, 2013 at 01:31:10PM +0000, Finucane, Stephen wrote:
> I have a question on the testing practices of OVS that I'd like some
> assistance with if possible.
> 
> It is my understanding that there are two test "frameworks"
> available for Open vSwitch (OVS) - ovs-testsuite and OFTest. The
> former is an OVS-specific collection of unit tests that are designed
> to test atomic pieces of the code (as with all unit tests). This is
> written in GNU Autotest with supporting Python scripts. The latter
> is a generic test suite designed to test OpenFlow (OF) compatibility
> in a target switch (OVS in this case). This, in turn, is written in
> Python. (Correct me if I've any of this wrong so far)
> 
> Now these tests cover a large portion of the code base and ensure
> compatibility with OF respectively but I fail to see how either
> tests the fundamental functionality of the vSwitch - that is that if
> you send in packets on a real interface (like eth0) you will get
> packets out the other side (or not, depending on the actions
> applied). I imagine such as test would require traffic generation on
> the real ports and no test includes this. Therefore, does a "test
> harness" exist for testing such functionality and is it publicly
> available? If not, is there any reason why not?

OFTest can run over physical ports.